Ace: aceofspadeshq at gee mail.com
Buck: buck.throckmorton at protonmail.com
CBD: cbd at cutjibnewsletter.com
joe mannix: mannix2024 at proton.me
MisHum: petmorons at gee mail.com
J.J. Sefton: sefton at cutjibnewsletter.com
Chavez the Hugo 2020
Ibguy 2020
Rickl 2019
Joffen 2014
AoSHQ Writers Group
A site for members of the Horde to post their stories seeking beta readers, editing help, brainstorming, and story ideas. Also to share links to potential publishing outlets, writing help sites, and videos posting tips to get published.
Contact OrangeEnt for info: maildrop62 at proton dot me
No, you probably don't know Alexander Mackenrick's name, but I assure you that you know at least one of his movies, the original The Ladykillers. And behind that layer of anonymity lies one of the most technically accomplished and intelligent directors to come out of the WWII era of British filmmaking. Only separated by seven years for his first feature compared with David Lean (Lean's first was in 1942, Mackendrick's was in 1949), Mackendrick actually started directing cinema commercials in the late 30s for a marketing firm before being hired by the Ministry of Information to make propaganda films through the duration of the war.
I bring up Lean because the two men had very obviously similar views on the role of the film director. Rising up through the industry as a screenwriter and production designer (Lean's rise was through the role of editor), Mackendrick saw the film director's job as requiring intimate understanding of every aspect of a production. A film director should be able to essentially do any job on a film set at the same level as any craftsman given the more minor tasks could. He should be screenwriter, production designer, set dresser, cinematographer, and actor all in one, able to understand the craft of everyone involved in order to appropriately assemble the vision at the center of the film. A film director is both artist and craftsman, and that overall ethos was something he shared with Lean. It must have been something in the water in Britain in the 40s.
What really differentiates Mackendrick from Lean is twofold. The first is that Mackendrick's feature film directing career started at Ealing Studios, the small production company mostly known for comedies (one of his early films there, Mandy, is an outright drama, though), and the second reason is that Mackendrick...gave up on making movies. After the 1967 bomb Don't Make Waves, which is mostly notable for being Sharon Tate's feature film debut, Mackendrick decided that he didn't have the skillset necessary to schmooze producers for film jobs, so he retired from filmmaking and became the first dean of the film school at CalArts, stepping down after a decade and teaching for the rest of his professional life. His most prominent student would probably end up being James Mangold, director of Ford v. Ferrari, Logan, and A Complete Unknown.
So, why would someone like Mackendrick give up on filmmaking to just teach?
Mackendrick got his first directing job through several years of working as a screenwriter at Ealing. Whisky Galore! was supposed to be directed by Ronold Neame, but he turned the assignment down, opening it up to those who wanted their shot at the directing job. Mackendrick showed up on location (an unusual setup for an Ealing film, necessary in this instance because all of their studio space was being used up), threw out the script completely, and worked with his pair of writers to come up with something new, using the same basic bones as the original script. It was a success, a sort of based on real life tale of a small island community, cut off from all booze during rationing in the middle of the war, suddenly being granted great bounty in the form of a cargo ship crashing just off shore, full of whisky.
And Mackendrick's time at Ealing was largely managing these kinds of productions to different degrees of success. The Man in the White Suit and The Ladykillers both feature very different performances from Alec Guinness in his prime (the second film is an inspired Alistair Sim impression), but the common hand across all of these accomplished films, which include the lesser but entertaining works of Mandy, the story of a deaf girl, and The Maggie, a farce with a more serious minded ending about a cargo ship not up for the task it gets, is Mackendrick's. They're all well-made, with strong scripts, and show a young director with a strong eye, a hand for comedy, good relationships with actors, and command of narrative.
And then, he went to America.
Hecht-Hill-Lancaster
One of the most important independent producing partnerships in the 50s, the final years of the studio era, was the company formed by Harold Hecht, James Hill, and Burt Lancaster, and they snatched up the promising young director from Scotland (actually, Mackendrick was born in Boston, just raised on Glasgow) to direct the adaptation of Ernest Lehman's novelette Tell Me About It Tomorrow!. Lehman was hired originally as the screenwriter, but had to leave the production with about a month left in pre-production. HHL hired Clifford Odets to do the final rewrites, which everyone assumed would be a quick job, but encouraged by Mackendrick, the rewrite process went all the way through the entire production.
And that's indicative of a major problem Mackendrick had when it came to his production approach. He wanted to take his time. Time always equals money, and when you spend $1 million on the production of Sweet Smell of Success, a major investment for an independent production company, and that film actually loses $400,000 upon its original release, it's going to cause friction with those producers. Which it did.
When I do these surveys of a filmmaker's work, I tend to avoid biography as I go through the films. I want to figure out the films, and I don't usually care that much about the people themselves. However, there's a six year gap between Sweet Smell of Success and his next film, Sammy Going South, and it's important.
HHL wasn't done with Mackendrick after the financial disappointment of Sweet Smell of Success. They had little but good things to say about the exacting filmmaker, and they greenlit his next film, The Devil's Disciple, a project that originally attracted Mackendrick to work with HHL. However, HHL fired Mackendrick from the adaptation of the George Bernard Shaw play (replaced with Guy Hamilton) after a month of production. That's a setback, but it wasn't the only one.
He was also the original director of The Guns of Navarone, but was fired a week before production started in 1960.
He spent the next three years in the wilderness until one of the original producers from Ealing, Hal Mason, hired him to direct an adaptation of the W.H. Canaway novel, Sammy Going South, a story about a ten year old boy walking from the Suez Canal to South Africa after his parents are killed in a bomb attack. I genuinely think this movie is really good, but it also represented a setback for Mackendrick. The American distributors recut and cut down the film so much, taking out so much of the running time that they had to commission a new score to fit the film while retitling it A Boy Ten Feet Tall (I'll be honest, I prefer the American title).
If I were Mackendrick, I'd be exhausted and frustrated at this point.
Final Films
Mackendrick didn't quite give up after Sammy Going South. He made two more films. The first, A High Wind in Jamaica has many elements that make it look like, on the surface, a live-action Disney film from the era. Six kids in the late 19th century get kidnapped by pirates and must warm their icy hearts. Except, Mackendrick, working from the novel by Richard Hughes, goes darker with more child danger than the implied genre connection would indicate. The film is pretty good with a near-manic performance by Anthony Quinn and a noteworthy early performance from James Coburn.
However, you can just feel that he's lost with his final film, Don't Make Waves, an anti-beach party movie that reunited him with his Sweet Smell of Success star Tony Curtis. Curtis plays a man who arrives in California with nothing, gets wooed by two women (one of whom is Claudia Cardinale) while lusting after a third (the aforementioned Sharon Tate). It's supposed to be a comedy, but it's weirdly...not funny from the guy who made The Ladykillers, and it ends with a big special effects sequence where the underlying dramatic point is that the materialistic beach life is empty and without meaning.
I mean...no wonder it didn't make much money at the box office and people haven't rushed to defend it over the years. And the reality of the production, which Tate called not particularly pleasurable, was enough to just get Mackendrick to stop making films altogether.
Themes
All this is fine and good, but did he actually, you know, inject something personal into his films? Did he just make generic entertainments that anyone could have made with his skill, or did he have some unique perspective that seeped into everything?
It's the latter. He was a filmmaker who, in his own small way, pulled productions towards his own thematic concerns. And that really centers on the ideas of corruption of authority contrasted with portraits of innocence with really interesting variations. The first is his first film, Whisky Galore! where he's on record as actually feeling more akin to the antagonist of the film, the very Scottish authority figure out to ruin everyone's fun by getting them to turn over the whisky they took from a shipwreck. In The Ladykillers, the innocent Mrs. Wilberforce gets to face the group of thieves taking up temporary residence in her house. In The Maggie, the powerful magnate who tries to buy everyone ends up learning the value of a smaller existence through the pratfalls of the boating crew he accidentally hires.
He's one of those filmmakers that doesn't have a very distinct visual flair (he filmed very handsomely and very classically), but actually did bend films to what he wanted to say. The problem is that he just...stopped making movies, so his body of work is so small and so much is in comedy, which no one really takes seriously, so he never really had the time to develop the ideas and people are dismissive of his comedies as just comedies not worthy of actual serious consideration.
In Retrospect
I know enough about the filmmaking process to understand that the management of a filmset is difficult and draining. That it takes, often, 16-hour days to manage departments, film scenes, deal with actors and problems on set, and that's after you've secured funding to get everyone in place. The schmoozing with studio heads, producers, and independent money sources just to get that set together in the first place is a whole other set of skills. A modern example to point to would be Terry Gilliam who spends years between productions, traveling around Europe begging for people for money. And that's simply a different skillset.
And a guy who runs off to academia in order to not deal with it obviously doesn't want to exercise that skillset. To bring in another modern example, I think of Peter Weir, the Australian filmmaker who simply gave up filmmaker a few years after the release of his final movie, The Way Back, when he grew tired of dealing with producers and actors who demanded things from him (Ethan Hawke knows the particular actor that ticked off Weir, but he's not sayin' who).
So, Mackendrick retreated to a safe space where he could think about the craft, help people with their own craft, and still affect things for decades more. Don't Make Waves was released in 1967, and he kept teaching at CalArts until his death in 1991 of emphysema.
It's easy to sit on the sidelines, decades after his death, never having dealt with his professional troubles myself, and demand that he pick himself up, rub some dirt on it, and go back to entertaining me. So, I'm not going to shake my fist at a dead man. Instead, I will thank him. His was a consummate craftsman who understood moviemaking at a level that I never will. If he had made 10-20 more films, he'd be much more widely recognized as a master of the form, but his limited output also limits his appeal to a certain degree. He doesn't have the visual distinctiveness of a Stanley Kubrick to get him over that hump, either.
Plus, you know, most of his well-known films are comedies, and no one respects that.
But I do. Mackendrick was a master at the form, and he should be celebrated more.
The Man in the White Suit (Rating 4/4) Review "Mackendrick had a writing credit on this, and he shepherded a completely new script once on location on the former film, so it's safe to say that he's putting himself into these films, and I'm seeing the beginnings of something...interesting. And surprisingly dark considering the comic nature of his first two films." [Library]
Mandy (Rating 3/4) Full Review "Handsome, well-acted, and really surprisingly involving, Mandy is very much worthwhile." [Library]
The Maggie (Rating 3/4) Full Review "This is not some grand piece of cinema, but it's a nice bit of populist cinema that is worthy of discovery." [Amazon Prime]
The Ladykillers (Rating 4/4) Full Review "It's a treasure, a gem of British comedy. It might be Mackendrick's best film, but I've seen so little of what comes that it's just hard to imagine him topping this." [Personal Collection]
Sweet Smell of Success (Rating 3/4) Full Review "And Mackendrick manages everything with real skill and intelligence, creating this propulsive narrative dripping with tension without losing sight of humanity at the same time. It's a real triumph of filmmaking. [Personal Collection]
Sammy Going South (Rating 3.5/4) Full Review "IThat the American version (retitled A Boy Ten Feet Tall, a title actually much prefer) cut out a bunch doesn't really surprise me, but I don't think I'd want to cut much. This is very good as it is." [Youtube]
High Wind in Jamaica (Rating 3/4) Full Review "II do think a two-hour and ten-minute long version of this would probably work better than the one-hour and forty-minute version, but the abbreviated cut we have is a solid little entertainment that demonstrates Mackendrick's skill." [Youtube]
Contact
Email any suggestions or questions to thejamesmadison.aos at symbol gmail dot com.
I've also archived all the old posts here, by request. I'll add new posts a week after they originally post at the HQ.
My next post will be on 12/13, and it will be about something. Not sure yet.
Welcome hobbyists! Ahoy! Pull up a chair and sit a spell with the Horde in this little corner of the interweb. This is the mighty, mighty, mighty officially sanctioned Ace of Spades Hobby Thread. A spin of the Ace of Spades Wheel of Hobbies (TM) landed on boating.
Last week's RV life theme spurred some to suggest that RV life was like boating life because of the ability to take your home with you.
Are you thinking "I don't know much about boats, I don't swim, and I still have JAWS trauma, but I am curious about boating. I'm eager to learn more. I can't wait to get into the content!" I knew it. Enjoy.
As per usual Hobby Thread etiquette, keep this thread limited to hobbying. All (legal) hobbying is welcome - even if you're into hording Compute! magazines and playing Hunt the Wumpus. However, politics, current events and religious debates can live in threads elsewhere. Pants are optional but swimsuits or board shorts are recommended. Puns are welcome and encouraged.
Play nice. Don't be a troll and do not feed the trolls.
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TRex is not wise in the ways of boats. I have never owned a boat. Nobody has nicknamed me "Admiral" or "Commodore." I understand they have a charm and have heard the classic adage of the happiest two days for a boat owner are the day of purchase and the day of sale. I have also heard the familiar advice of better to have a friend with a boat than have a boat yourself.
I also don't understand the difference between a boat and a ship. Seems like a ship is a bigger boat, but maybe that's what they teach in the Navy. The best explanation I could find on the interweb is: "A ship can hold a boat. A boat can't hold a ship." That doesn't explain a u-boat (or maybe it does).
Looking for help from the nautical Morons in the gray boxes on this one. If you're not nautical, you are welcome to join and further confuse things. Morons are particularly susceptible to canoe accidents, so be careful on this thread.
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I believe that JackStraw sent these photos. I think he built this boat. I don't know because my notes are bad and I can't find the purported original email. If I'm correct, perhaps he will join and tell his tale. If I'm incorrect, here are two random pictures of a boat with no context or story at all.
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Mandatory content for this theme.
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There are roughly a bazillion videos on YT about boating in all its forms. There are enough to give RV life videos a run for the volume award. Given my small dino brain and short arms, I've attempted to select a few of the less obvious videos for reasons of variety and novelty. I've also selected a few that might intrigue hobbyists in general.
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Handmade means handmade:
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Wow. A wood whisperer. This is fascinating.
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The 3D modeling for this video is only surpassed by how impressive it was to design and build ships like this in period.
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This qualifies as eccentric (and a little crazy) but I'm glad the world is big enough to accommodate the eccentrics. Long, long video so save this one for later. Serious skills and a LOT of labor but it is here cause it involves a boat. I really felt for the guy when he unexpectedly found 374 bronze screws filled with epoxy and plywood epoxied to tongue and groove boards (start at the 33:50 mark). Full disclosure - this episode has some boat restoration but a lot of other woodworking. Youtube may be a lot of things but it gives a platform for creators like this that wouldn't easily exist elsewhere.
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Maybe we'll stick with something on a smaller scale.
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Random hobbying, but finally found a good use for broccoli.
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How interesting can re-engineering a tape measure be? Turns out, very interesting!
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I suspect that some among the Horde may have made an Airfix Spitfire plastic scale model. You will appreciate this:
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Did you miss the Hobby Thread last week? We did an RV life theme. The comments may be closed, but you can re-live the content.
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Notable comments from last week:
Bonus MoMe news:
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Words of wisdom:
"Because despite all our troubles, when things are grim out in that wide round world of ours, that's when it's really important to have a good hobby." Posted by: tankascribe at June 22, 2024 07:41 PM (HWxAD).
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If you have trouble finding something in the content or comments that resonates with you, contribute something from your personal hobbying. We will feature a different theme next time. What are you hobbying? We love showing off Horde hobbying. Send thoughts, suggestions and photos of your hobbying to moronhobbies at protonmail dot com. Do mighty things.
You may recall that last week, I said that we had a sick pup. Well, on Sunday, he crossed the Rainbow Bridge. He had been almost deaf for some time and had been developing some problems walking and eating, but then it was like his systems started to go into shut-down, over a rather short period of time. So alarming.
He started having honest-to-goodness seizures while we waited for a room to clear at the emergency vet office. Busy day for them. I think they gave him something for the seizures before it was time for his final farewell. He seemed calm then. He wanted lap time last week, which was not usual for him. Nose in the crook of an elbow or on a neck. He seemed to know.
This is a photo of Little Buddy on an old work table in the back yard in 2014. He liked to eat there, where the other dogs did not go. Sometimes he channeled a meerkat. But he had a minor seizure disorder that made him sort of blank out and we started to worry that he would fall off the table, so we took it down. That's a pomegranate tree in the next door lot hanging over the fence.
This is Little Buddy with his biggest friend, Troy. Troy had been a street dog and Little Buddy had been a street puppy. They both had beautiful eyes and soft, floppy ears that kept them from looking too dignified. We lost Troy years ago, and we hope that they are having a nice reunion. Our remaining dog, Curly, looks for his brother when he goes outside. Little Buddy was bigger than Curly, but Curly was the alpha dog. He misses escorting him to dinner.
We hoomans suddenly miss the other dogs we have lost - not just Little Buddy. Farewell, friends.
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Hi KT,
Here's Purry Mason, Publius' princeling, sitting in the garage window.
Miley
So dignified! And observant.
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&&&
I had a stray kitten show up in the yard, mostly lurking around for a day, which is not unusual since all the neighbors have cats, but the next day she came in the kitchen door and started eating out of the cat bowl.
I have put flyers out, posted on facebook, left notice with the local vets, the Humane Society and the local cat adoption, and I have had no response.
I know someone really misses her since she is so sweet, but after a week I am starting to hope no one claims her, she has really calmed my other tom kitten down. "calmed down" is a relative term, of course, since they spend most of their play time boiling around the house
We are calling her Becca.
kindltot
Another sweetie.
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Rosie is our rescue Briard. She is sweet natured but full of energy.She just had her 5th birthday. She is vigilantly watching for animals invading our back yard.
Chopper
Love Rosie's face.
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Here's a pic of my mini-golden retriever at his second birthday party. Dubby is a very good boy! His "cake" is liverwurst with bacon. He didn"t give me a piece.
Farmer Bob
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Thank you for sharing your pets and animal photos and stories with us today.
If you would like to send pet and/or animal stories, links, etc. for the Ace of Spades Pet Thread, the address is:
petmorons at protonmail dot com
Remember to include the nic or name by which you wish to be known when you comment at AoSHQ, or let us know if you want to remain a lurker.
As we approach Thanksgiving, a special feature on hazelnuts from 58Mikie!
Hi KT!
I want to say I enjoy Ace of Spades each and every day, with all contributors kicking it....From my standpoint, being involved with Oregon agriculture for my entire life, I particularly enjoy your "gardening" contribution!
Picture attached is a Hazelnut tree(Corylus avellana) from our orchards in Western Oregon's Willamette Valley. We have grown Hazelnuts here since 1939.
The Willamette Valley in Oregon grows 99% of the Hazelnut produced in the United States, although particularly this year (more later), Oregon's production may reach only 10 percent of total world production.
The main growing areas for Hazelnuts (I grew up calling them Filberts..."Farmers grow Filberts, people sell Hazelnuts".) are countries primarily in the northern hemisphere slightly above or below the 45th latitude, with a semi-marine climate....e.g. Turkey on the Black Sea, the largest producer, followed this year by either Chile or Oregon. The country of Georgia produces hazelnuts (Black Sea, also see Hilary Rodham Clintons brother investing in Georgia in Hazelnuts in the past), as does Azerbaijan, Italy (the past number two producer, and home to mega hazelnut using company Ferrero).
For scale, Turkey produces Hazelnut crops each year in the 500k tons to 800k ton level. The world in normal years north of one million tons of hazelnuts. Oregon the year, perhaps 120,000 tons.
As a fifty year + veteran of the Oregon hazelnut industry, I have seen some changes. For many years, our main variety of Hazelnuts was "Barcelona". A very large tree with large quality Hazelnuts. However, in 1986, a fungal disease called Eastern Filbert Blight-EFB- was found in the main growing regions of Oregon. The disease will eventually kill the tree, although much better fungicides are slowing the inevitability of the tree dying. During this time Oregon State University and its Hazelnut breeding program, under Dr. Shawn Mehlenbacher, have developed Hazelnut trees by traditional breeding with genes for EFB resistance.
During much of my farming career Oregon had about 30 thousand acres of Hazelnuts. Now with the "new" resistant trees, Oregon has nearly 100k acres producing Hazelnuts. Ferrero the big Italian conglomerate, I hear, would like another 100k acres here in Oregon producing Hazelnuts...
You know Ferrero produces Nutella....certainly a world wide phenomenon...I understand that Ferrero uses some 25-30 % of all Hazelnuts produced in the world.
This company has invested heavily in Turkey (besides their home company of Italy....and Chile).
As Turkey has been the world leader of Hazelnut (Findik) production for a long time, it is part of their national identity. During my time it has been my understanding, that the average Hazelnut farm in Turkey was about three acres (see production numbers above). Growers in Turkey mainly pick their production by hand, dry and sort the crop on blue tarps in the sun and deliver in large bags to the market or warehouses. In Oregon, my son and I do 100 acres with machinery, etc,.
This year, on April 11th, Turkey had a "deep freeze" in much of its vast agricultural lands. ( I have been there three times -a great place to visit, but.....the politics.
Hazelnuts are part of politics there and I have been in small room listening to Erdogan speaking...more than 20 years ago). The temperature in the hazelnut "hills"south of the Black Sea experienced 5 degrees F with the trees in full leaf; a bad crop disaster(also Turkish apricots were hammered and citrus was affected too). In addition, this area is "plagued" by a bug we in Oregon call the stink bug, which in Turkey is called the "skunk" bug. It does tremendous damage to the hazelnuts there. The Hazelnut market is currently abuzz....
FWIW, we are happy....we had EFB early on and had to pull out of all our orchard and replant with new varieties, which are now just producing...with a good market.
Several more photos to come.....
Thank you for all that you do....
58Mikie
Lots of good information there. I planted a couple of filbert relatives in my parent's yard years ago. The nuts are smaller than the ones you grow.
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This is the pollen structure for Hazelnuts, the "catkin"..... a few blooms in the picture too.
As the winter proceeds, these catkins elongate, dry out, an release pollen. The main producing Hazelnut varieties also produce pollen but are self in-compatible. Pollenizers of different pollen "shed times" must be dispersed throughout the orchards...
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A hazelnut bloom....in Winter. The pollen must be dry to blow in the air and land on the bloom, but following that movement of the pollen, high humidity is great (rain) to set the pollen in the bloom. The pollen must travel through the bloom with actual fertilization not occurring until May....
The pollenization details are complex. One of these days we'll try to post the little video of shaking a pollen tree in an orchard on a favorable day.
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Lady Bug in the winter near a "catkin"
VORACIOUS, consumers of aphids in our orchards...we used to spray for aphids....not for the last twenty years...we love these bugs!
Juvenile form of Lady Bug...they eat aphids too!
Better than those stink bugs!
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The Hazelnut production in July...we start harvesting in mid September....this is the variety "Yamhill"...the county we live in and one of the original counties (1843) in the Oregon territory..
Thank you
Take care
Thank you for teaching us so much. We're ready for some hazelnut treats now!
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Gardens of The Horde
Anything going on in your garden?
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Hope everyone has a nice weekend.
If you would like to send photos, stories, links, etc. for the Saturday Gardening Thread, the address is:
ktinthegarden at g mail dot com
Remember to include the nic or name by which you wish to be known at AoSHQ, or let us know if you want to remain a lurker.
There are many things for which we can be grateful as we approach Thanksgiving. This week, I ran across a new one. I am grateful that I am not in Tajekistan. There are some attractive things about this country of about ten million people, but for me the negatives outweigh the positives. I don't want to climb Lenin Peak, even. I think border clashes are possible nearby.
This is one thing I found interesting about the country at first:
Tajikistan curbs the influence of islam and promotes Ancient Persian heritage as a state policy. This includes banning Arabic names, cousin marriages and long beards. It also includes promoting native clothes and dance. The West should take note.
This costuming is rather attractive compared to what you see in Iran these days:
From the beginning of this video, the celebration of the preservation of ancient Persian culture seems to be a big deal. Even though Russian is an official language in Tajikistan. A backstory begins to emerge: there were Arab invasions.
The suppression of Islam comes with the suppression of other religions. The government officially prefers atheism. The history of Jews in the country is interesting. Hardly any left now.
Actually, the government suppresses a lot of things. From Freedom House:
Overview
The authoritarian regime of President Emomali Rahmon, who has ruled since 1992, severely restricts political rights and civil liberties. The political opposition and independent media have been devastated by a sustained campaign of repression, and the government exerts tight control over religious expression and activity. Wealth and authority are concentrated in the hands of Rahmon and his family.
Key Developments in 2024
Tens of thousands of Tajikistani migrant workers returned home or were deported from Russia in the months after a March terrorist attack at a concert hall in Moscow that killed nearly 150 people. The attack was claimed by an Afghanistan-based terrorist group, Islamic State Khorasan; Russian authorities attributed it to Tajikistani migrant workers and attempted to link them to Ukraine. The ensuing crackdown on migrants in Russia prompted many to leave, and those who remained faced increasing pressure to enlist in the Russian military.
In July, Tajikistani and Kyrgyzstani delegations reported progress on the delimitation of their shared border. . .
Legislation adopted by the parliament in May and signed by the president in June banned the import, sale, and wearing of clothes that are deemed to conflict with “national culture.” Violations would be punishable by fines. The law also imposed restrictions on certain religious, cultural, and family celebrations.
Independent journalists continued to face persecution during the year. For example, Ahmad Ibrohim, editor in chief of the newspaper Payk, was arrested August on dubious charges of bribery, extortion, and extremism. The outcome of a closed-door trial was pending at year’s end.
Tajikistani authorities persisted in their extensive efforts to detain and punish political dissidents who had sought refuge abroad. . .
So, are you also grateful not to be in Tajikistan? Or Iran, where the ancient Persian culture in Tajikistan mostly does not seem to have survived?
Any other countries you are particularly grateful not to be in today?
Other things for which I am grateful
I am grateful today that I am not Candace Owens
BREAKING: Candace Owens appears to have been PRANKED on air by a tip.
In yesterday’s episode, Candace read out an email from someone claiming to have inside knowledge about why her Egyptian plane landed in Delaware. The tip said all directions pointed to the address: One Rodney… pic.twitter.com/yDVrLv28WA
John Hinderaker: The Week In Pictures: Epstein Boomerang Edition
For the most part it was a pretty quiet week. Many longstanding stories continued to make headlines: the UN adopted President Trump’s peace plan for Gaza; the administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration continued, as did the Democrats’ lawlessness; and there were various shutdown post mortems.
These topics did not gain the attention of meme-makers. Rather, this was the week of Jeffrey Epstein. Or, rather, the week when the Democrats got their wish, thousands of pages of Epstein documents were released, and the upshot was–as we already knew–that Epstein, a Democrat, had Democratic friends and hated Donald Trump. So the whole thing, from the Democrats’ standpoint, was an exploding cigar:
The Classical Saturday Coffee Break & Prayer Revival
—Misanthropic Humanitarian
[H/T Blake]
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Good morning boys and girls and everything in between. Before we enter the Prayer Revival just a few housekeeping matters to go over. (Rulz for those of you in New Ulm)
1) This is an open thread. Feel free to lurk, opine and/or bloviate.
2) Be kind, be nice. Not just a suggestion.
3) Running with sharp objects is frowned upon.
4) Have a great weekend and a Happy Thanksgiving on Thursday.
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“God grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change;
Courage to change the things I can;
And wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as He did, this sinful world
As it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make all things right
If I surrender to His Will;
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life
And supremely happy with Him
Forever and ever in the next. Amen.”
Please submit any prayer requests to me, “Annie’s Stew” at apaslo at-sign hotmail dot com. Prayer requests are generally removed after four weeks unless we receive an update.
Prayer Requests:
9/28 - Teresa in Fort Worth gave an update: It has been 1 year since Teresa started “down the cancer rabbit hole”. She sends her thanks for the prayers as they have buoyed her and her family through this year. She has been blessed to exceed the original 6-12 months predicted, by the grace of God – and the prayers of many people. Her next CT scan is in November, and the surgeon is pretty sure that her tumors will be small enough to remove/destroy.
11/10 Update – Everything is fine, but it looks like the cancer is starting to figure out a way around the medication – something they knew would probably happen around this time in the protocol. More news will be coming soon – possibly surgery in late Dec/early Jan.
11/14 Update – Surgery is scheduled for 12/11. She should be able to travel for Christmas.
10/2 – Bluebell passed along an update: grammie winger sends her gratitude for all the prayers – she feels they are working. On Oct 6 she will be starting a cancer treatment program because her doctors are “cautiously optimistic” that they can give her some more time. Monday she gets the port, followed by 6 hours of chemo infusion on Tuesday. The Rev is doing better because now he has some hope. Please pray for her as she starts this treatment program because in her words, “prayer changes things”.
10/18 Update – grammie winger sent an update, that she has had her first chemo treatment. There were no side effects. She noted “God is very kind.”
11/8 Update – grammie winger posted that chemo is “kicking my butt and it’s hard to think”.
10/4 – Skip requested prayers for his dad, who fell at church back in August, hitting his head. He fell again at home and has had back pain since then. He is going in for more tests on 10/8.
10/11 Update – Dad has a brace to wear and has pain medication, so is doing OK for now. He will need an outpatient procedure soon for an injection in his spine to fill a void. Continuing prayers will help.
10/18 Update – Dad is in the hospital, needing some blood clots cleared up, and will soon have the outpatient operation for his back.
10/25 Update – Dad was released from the hospital and is in a rehab center near his home.
10/22 – Pennsyltucky requested prayers for his dad, who underwent cancer surgery on 10/21. Everything seems to have gone well (they’re confident they got it all!) but due to his age, his hospital stay and convalescence will be longer than usual. Dad is doing well, is awake and alert. A full recovery is anticipated but it will take a while. Thank you so much.
11/6 Update – Pennsyltucky’s dad is out of the hospital and is now convalescing at home with the aid of home care nurse visits. He’s not able to walk very well, having spent so long in a hospital bed, but he’s in good spirits and improving daily. Thanks for your prayers!
10/25 – M&B would like prayers for M's sister. Suddenly, she got dizzy, and with no other symptoms, was diagnosed with a stage 4 glioblastoma brain cancer. Surgeons said that they were able to remove most of it but gave her an 18-24 month survival. She's just finished the first round of chemo and radiation, and she just feels awful. She has that "deer in the headlights" look, since this all happened so fast, with no real symptoms! M&B have been searching through all the recent news about other medicinal options that are working for this type of cancer. We are grateful for all prayers!
10/25 – FenelonSpoke asked for prayers for her retired organist Jessie, whose dear daughter, S, died of cancer recently. Also prayers for Korean War vet, R, who has cancer and is not expected to live long.
10/27 – Polliwog the ‘Ette asked for prayers for her youngest daughter, "LK", who needs prayers for safety and peace, and her best friend "C" for health and that stress not cause a flare up of psoriatic arthritis as they and another roommate work with the police and the landlord to have the 4th roommate "M" evicted because she is threatening them and making the living situation a nightmare. “M” is bipolar and medicating with alcohol. Prayers for her healing and that she find salvation from the self-destructive path she's on would also be appreciated.
11/8 Update – The situation still needs lots of prayer. LK sand C have been staying at a hotel to avoid M, who wants to fight whenever she sees them. M is supposed to move out the end of Dec. but that seems like a very long time when C still needs to attend class and keep her arthritis in check.
11/5 – Mary Poppins’ Practically Perfect Piercing said he could use a prayer or two. He has a pain in her head which, it seems, is occipital neuralgia. It’s not fatal, thank heavens, but is painful until a proper treatment course is settled upon. Many thanks.
11/12 Update – Pronouns corrected above.
11/6 - D sent an update on his wife Susan, and her battle with cancer. He sent his thanks to everyone for the prayers. They are helping and much appreciated. Susan had an infection which is being treated, but her sodium levels are bad again. She will be sent home soon, but is on restrictive fluids until this is cleared up. The good news is that she has gained some weight back and her voice is much stronger now. Thank you, and please keep up the prayers. They appreciate everyone!
11/20 Update – Susan is out of the hospital, after 2 weeks. For the first time in months, she doesn’t have any drainage tubes. Chemo is on hold for the next 2 weeks, to give her time to rest, recover, and gain some weight back. Thank you, everyone, for your prayers – please continue them!
11/7 – BarelyScaryMary requested prayers for a friend, RJ, who is having heart issues. She will likely get stents or a bypass soon. Prayers are needed for RJ’s recovery, and also that she is able and willing to make the lifestyle changes necessary for her health.
11/13 Update – Stents were not an option for RJ, so she needs a bypass. She is waiting for the surgery to be scheduled. She is apprehensive about the surgery and recovery. Prayers are also needed for BarelyScaryMary’s dad, who is also having heart problems. Her mom could use prayers, too, as she is watching her husband of 60 years decline.
11/8 – Dash my lace wings had an urgent request for prayers for a co-worker and friend who is hospitalized with sepsis. It is extremely resistant to antibiotics and has attached to the artificial heart valve she got less than a year ago. Her situation is tenuous.
11/15 Update – The co-worker is healing. She was released from the hospital and is on IV antibiotics for 6 weeks. Thank you for your prayers. We nearly lost her.
11/8 – Farmer Bob asked for prayers for his Uncle Richard’s MIL who passed away on 11/7, and for Richard’s wife Linda. Linda’s putting on a brave face and it was not unexpected, but it’s hard to lose your mother.
11/14 – Halfhand requested prayers for a sister whose husband recently passed away unexpectedly in his sleep. They had just upended their lives to move from California to Tennessee; now she is all alone.
11/15 – Smell the Glove asked for prayers for an 81 year-old aunt who has colon cancer. She is stopping chemo, since it’s not working and it’s tiring her out. Doctors will determine if any other treatment is proper.
11/15 – Sponge posted an update on the “First lady”. She is doing OK from the surgery pain-wise, however it appears her compromised immune system from chemo is susceptible to viruses. She has been spiking a fever all weekend.
For submission guidelines and other relevant info, please contact Annie's Stew, who is managing the prayer list. You can contact her at apaslo at-sign hotmail dot com. If you see a prayer request posted in a thread comment, feel free to copy and paste it and e-mail it to Annie's Stew. She tries to keep up with the requests in the threads, but she's not here all of the time, so she may not see it unless you e-mail it to her. Please note: Prayer requests are generally removed after four weeks or so unless we receive an update.
2 Corinthians 4:8-9
We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair, persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed.
During an all-hands meeting earlier this month, Google's AI infrastructure head Amin Vahdat told employees that the company must double its serving capacity every six months to meet demand for artificial intelligence services, reports CNBC. Vahdat, a vice president at Google Cloud, presented slides showing the company needs to scale "the next 1000x in 4-5 years."
That would put Google Cloud Services at around $60 trillion in revenue per year, more than double the entire US GDP.
Where do you expect the money to come from to fund this insanity?
While a thousandfold increase in compute capacity sounds ambitious by itself, Vahdat noted some key constraints: Google needs to be able to deliver this increase in capability, compute, and storage networking "for essentially the same cost and increasingly, the same power, the same energy level," he told employees during the meeting.
Oh. Magic.
"It won't be easy but through collaboration and co-design, we're going to get there."
No, you're not, and everyone knows you're not.
Progress over the last seven years, at truly massive cost, has been around 60% better AI performance per watt annually. Chip improvements, algorithm improvements, and manufacturing improvements combined.
You're asking your team to boost that to 300% overnight.
This won't even scratch the surface if the AI bubble keeps demanding hardware on its current trajectory.
And the memory makers aren't going to build new factories any faster because only three of them survived when the last bubble burst.
Speaking of idiot tech executives, the CEO of the world's most popular game, Roblox, sat down for an interview with the New York Times. It did not go well. (Kotaku)
Asked how the company was dealing with its pedophile problem, CEO David Baszucki responded:
"We think of it not necessarily just as a problem, but an opportunity as well."
Remarkably, things actually went downhill from there.
"Unfortunately, one of the three trustees has irretrievably lost their private key, an honest but unfortunate human mistake, and therefore cannot compute their decryption share," the IACR said. "As a result, Helios is unable to complete the decryption process, and it is technically impossible for us to obtain or verify the final outcome of this election."
An entirely understandable mistake, assuming all these people are idiots.
WhatsApp allows anyone who knows your phone number to look up your public details on the app, assuming you have an account.
So what's to prevent someone from just iterating through all the 63 billion of so potential phone numbers in the world and finding all the people with WhatsApp accounts?
That's the problem with systems on this scale. The researchers were probing the system with 100 million API requests per hour, for weeks, from a single IP address, and nobody noticed.
And they've already fucked it. Though it seems the TOS clause about reverse-engineering was already in place, the rest of the changes pushed through yesterday are a complete train wreck for its customer base.
Howdy everyone! Welcome to the Friday ONT. This is my last ONT before Thanksgiving, so I hope everyone has a safe and joyful holiday. Now, let's bring on the memes!
Across three-fifths of the United States, the Trump administration has found half a million people receiving SNAP benefits twice over and 5,000 dead people receiving them. In deep blue states, the fraud is probably much worse.
It is important to clarify that 20+ states out of the 50 did not comply with the federal government's request for information on SNAP beneficiaries, likely because they are trying to hide how many illegal aliens are illicitly receiving food stamps. So the horrifying numbers revealed by U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins on Laura Ingraham's Fox News show, The Ingraham Angle, are actually incomplete, and will probably be much higher if the administration can make radical Democrat states provide the necessary data.
Rollins, having mentioned the blue states' incomplete SNAP data, stated that "of the 29 that complied, what we have found is staggering. Half a million people getting benefits two times under the same name, [likewise] 5,000 dead people." Those 5,000 cases are probably family members continuing to receive SNAP benefits instead of the deceased individuals. In any case, we are wasting huge amounts of taxpayer money on beneficiaries who have passed away and greedy double-dippers.
The secretary continued to list off food stamp recipient statistics: "80% [are] able-bodied Americans, meaning they can work, they don't have small children at home, they're not taking care of an elderly parent. They can work, and they choose not to work, of course, because they're getting significant benefits from the taxpayer."
To balance out the able-bodied people getting food stamps, the Democrats have thoughtfully allowed dead people to receive food stamps too. It all works out somehow.
Billion dollar nepo baby Alex Soros is pushing his bizarre idea of what "democracy" is, and Data Republican explained to the public what Alex Sorors' not-so-hidden definition of democracy is.
Surprise! By "Democracy," Alex Soros means a small cadre of global techocratic elites imposing their will on a public that has been stripped of the right to vote.
DataRepublican (small r)
@DataRepublican
Hello Alex,
You say your work is dedicated to strengthening democracy. I have one simple question for you.
In your 30th anniversary publication, you had an article from your longtime head of Open Society Fund-Serbia, Sonja Licht. She also happens to be one of the most decorated civilians in Europe and widely considered an expert in democracy:
🔹 Pro Merit Medal of the Council of Europe
🔹 Star of Italian Solidarity
🔹 French Legion of Honour
She has written and advised many democracy circles, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace among others.
In the article for Open Society, Licht openly discusses the problem of whether democracy can survive without trust in their leaders.
Her solution: "I believe the time has come for a responsible, courageous elite, those who care far more about addressing the genuine social problems than about election results. Only a political elite with vision, prudence and a focus on the general good--to whom the electorate, with their active involvement in public life, can cede part of their sovereignty in the elections... spearhead... our struggle to survive."
Read that again.
The idea of democracy as pushed by the head of one of your foundations is to literally stop "election results" and to have the public cede their trust to a technocratic elite.
End democracy to save democracy itself.
You cannot say that this is just a random musing of one employee. This is a woman who is highly regarded in democracy circles. This is a woman who ran one of your most prominent foundations during the fall of Milosevic. This is an article you platformed in your own thirtieth anniversary.
Now back to my question.
I am not going to ask a lame question like "what do you think democracy is?" -- I have spent over a thousand hours researching the topic for my book this year. I know what you think democracy is: it has nothing to do with elections and everything to do with ceding sovereignty to an unaccountable elite so you can implement your own twisted version of "equality" aka what most of us on the right call socialism.
Nor am I going to ask you if you disavow Sonja Licht. I know you won't and you never will. I know you agree with her secretly.
My question is:
Are you prepared for when your mask gets ripped off and everyone sees your version of "democracy" as the facade it is?
Social scientist Lisa Littman put a target on her back seven years ago by documenting "rapid-onset gender dysphoria" in youth, prompting her to leave Brown University after the Ivy League school tried to discredit her research by implying her study was retracted rather than slightly revised.
Another publisher retracted a subsequent ROGD paper under threat of an academic boycott and a demand to fire the journal's editor, gender dysphoria research pioneer Kenneth Zucker, claiming it lacked "informed consent" for its use of opt-in survey data.
Now advocates for giving healthy children puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries to remove breasts and genitals have a fresh target: the newly identified authors of a "pediatric gender dysphoria" systematic review commissioned by the Trump administration, which concludes global evidence does not support such interventions.
The final report Wednesday made "fairly minor edits" to the original published this spring, gender medicine journalist Ben Ryan said in the New York Sun, documented in the 3-page errata now attached to the report.
...
There's also a new 241-page supplement with peer reviews of the report recruited by the Department of Health and Human Services, most prominently by the American Psychiatric Association, and authors' replies to each.
HHS emphasized that the American Academy of Pediatrics and Endocrine Society -- strong supporters of so-called gender-affirming care for minors -- turned down its invitations.
...
The American Medical Association and AAP "peddled the lie that chemical and surgical sex-rejecting procedures could be good for children," HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Wednesday, using the same confrontational tone as when his agency released the original.
"They betrayed their oath to first do no harm" and "inflicted lasting physical and psychological damage on vulnerable young people," which is "malpractice," he also said.
The authors' findings discredit "pediatric sex-rejecting procedures" and affirm the Make America Healthy Again Commission's findings, that "unnecessary procedures and long-term health risks such as infertility are the byproduct of the overmedicalization of children," HHS said.
"Sex-rejecting procedures" appear to have been first suggested as a replacement for "gender-affirming," and as an alternative to HHS's proposed "sex-trait modification," just a week after the original report's release, coined by the Ethics and Public Policy Center. It's also used on the assistant secretary for health's "priorities" page.
"Sex-rejecting procedures" is better than the Orewellian lie "gender-affirming."
The Washington Post editorial board commended the final report, albeit under the cagey headline "What we still don't know about pediatric medical transition."
The Post is slowly going non-woke.
While the evidence of harm is also "sparse," the authors emphasized this "may reflect the relatively short period of time since the widespread adoption of the medical/surgical treatment model; the failure of existing studies to systematically track and report harms; and publication bias."
And cowardly academics falsifying their findings to appease the trans terrorists.
Helen Webberley, whose GenderGP service is notorious in the U.K. for flouting bans on pediatric gender-transition treatment by shipping blockers and hormones to British minors from abroad, is rolling out her telemedicine services in the United States, starting in 12 months.
Stella O'Malley
@stellaomalley3
For anyone wondering why Helen Webberley is suddenly everywhere, it is because she is expanding her dreadful mercenary hormone-peddling service for vulnerable, autistic, same sex attracted young people into the US. She knows this is where the profits are $$$$$
Vanessa Sivadge
@V_Sivadge
Meet Helen Webberley, founder of GenderGP:
* In 2018, she was fined for running an unregistered clinic.
* In 2022, a medical tribunal found she had failed to fully discuss fertility risks and provide proper follow up to patients.
* In 2024, she surrendered her UK medical license after facing allegations of serious misconduct.
Nothing to see here, just your average gender provider with an alarming past.
I guess this is actually technically a woman, but I don't know why this pyrsyn would even need Sex-Rejecting Procedures. Because she looks like a dude.
As these activists admit themselves: they target children, and almost never adults, because children's minds are highly impressionable and easily changed.
Last week I reported (well, I linked) a Sixth Circuit opinion stating that schools cannot force students to use fake pronouns. The Court ruled that the school may not use its power and authority to "skew" a necessary and legitimate debate on a political issue by imposing a fake resolution to that debate on students.
Via Greg Foreman, woke activists are boo-hoo whinin' and cryin' about the ruling. The first gay whiner he features lisps that you are using "supremacy" -- note he doesn't say "white supremacy," because he is white himself, and that would be ridiculous -- to "abuse queer people." He also uses a term I hear more and more from the woke -- you are abusing "authentic humans," strongly implying that queer/minority folx are "authentic humans" and you are not authentically human yourself.
Huh. And yet they whine about "dehumanization" every three seconds.
CBS "News" sad story: A gay FBI agent who displayed his Pride flag at work in defiance of FBI rules says he's been unjustly fired, and CBS "News" agrees!
The Pride flag should replace the American flag! Gays must have special privileges or it's homophobic!
David Maltinsky, a 16-year FBI employee who was weeks away from being elevated to the position of agent, filed a lawsuit alleging he was fired because he had a Pride flag draped near his desk. "I knew I was on a list," he told CBS News' @MacFarlaneNews. "There was fear after the administration came in that they were going to start looking at all of our personnel files, where some of us did self-identify our sexual orientation, some people did identify as trans. So there was fear early on that DOGE was going to collect this and they were going to curate a list and get rid of 'the undesirables.'"
Government employees represent the government and should not display their loyalty to a movement or a cause while at work. But like most on the left, they think their ideology is more important than the institutions they serve.
The more excitable readers may find this too disturbing to read, so caution: What you are about to read may be shocking.
But get this: The black female House member accused of stealing $5 million of FEMA covid funds for self-enrichment says that she's only being targeted because she's -- get this -- black and female.
Plot twist!
🚨 BREAKING: Indicted Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-FL) whines that she's being targeted because she's BLACK
"Always trying to intimidate you...especially attacking minorities, black and brown people!"
Note how the left's security deals with left-wing disruptors. Perhaps we should take a lesson from them and emulate their aggressive tactics.
Irmak
@Irmak7425560771
Translated from Turkish
GREETINGS TO THOSE WHOSE CONSCIENCES ARE NOT DEAD OR EXTINGUISHED!
"Activists calling out to Jones, 'You can't feed children in Denver while babies in Gaza are dying of hunger!'", "May you be cursed for selling your soul", "How much money did you take to stand on the wrong side of history?"
The FBI has intensified its effort across the U.S. to take down the online child-exploitation group, "764" network, with two recent examples highlighted by FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino.
In a post shared on X on Wednesday, Bongino revealed how the dangerous network has infiltrated online spaces popular with minors and said how aggressively federal authorities are moving to shut it down.
"For those who may not know, the 764 Network is a heinous child-exploitation ring that often targets children online and coerces them into acts of violence, self-harm, animal abuse, suicide, and sexual abuse," Bongino warned.
"At the beginning of the year, our teams redoubled efforts to go after these networks and eliminate them. We have more than 300 investigations connected to this network nationwide, and that number is growing. It is a top priority for us," he added.
Among the latest cases, Bongino said agents from FBI Baltimore arrested an individual on charges of targeting five minors, including a 13-year-old.
He said the suspect is now in federal custody, and additional details are expected as the investigation develops.
Meanwhile, in Arizona, an indictment revealed an individual in federal custody had been found allegedly targeting kids as an affiliate of "764."
"The nine victims involved were between 11 and 15 years old," Bongino explained, "Some of the allegations include distributing child pornography, cyberstalking, animal crushing, and even conspiring to provide material support to terrorists," Bongino said.
The "764" network traces back to 2021, when it was founded by Bradley "Felix" Cadenhead, a Texas teenager who operated a group called CVLT.
Named after the ZIP code of Cadenhead's hometown, "764" now exists within a broader ecosystem of violent online communities known as "The COM."
Members allegedly use popular online preteen and teen platforms such as Discord, Telegram and Roblox to recruit and manipulate minors.
"I cannot emphasize this enough, this is a major issue in America that not enough people know about," Bongino warned.
I wonder if this has anything to do with the rash of trans mass murders.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Thursday touted its arrest of the "worst of the worst" illegal aliens, which included child sex offenders and gang members.
"Every town is a border town because of 4 years of mass illegal migration into our country. Our ICE law enforcement officers are arresting the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens in American communities," said Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin. "Just yesterday, ICE arrested child pornographers, MS-13 gang members, and murderers. We are thankful for our law enforcement officers who put their lives on the line to remove these heinous criminals from our neighborhoods."
...
Topping the list was Francisco Luna-Tristan of Mexico, who was previously convicted of indecency with a child sexual contact.
Hsa Mu Na of Thailand was previously convicted of producing, distributing, and possessing child pornography.
David Diaz-Alvaredo of El Salvador was previously convicted of murder in aid of racketeering and is a member of MS-13.
Kevin Damian Duhaney of Jamaica was previously convicted of criminal possession of a firearm and attempted assault.
Leonel Longoria-Aquirino of Mexico was previously convicted of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
A husband and wife duo accused of running a sophisticated sex ring in Louisiana are previously deported illegal migrants with lengthy rap sheets.
Murillo Lazano-Vargas and Zabdi Danea Guzman-Diaz were apprehended by the East Baton Rouge Sheriff's Office earlier in November on charges related to the promotion of prostitution, human trafficking by force and pandering, according to local outlet WAFB. The married couple are Mexican nationals who are not only living in the U.S. unlawfully, but had already been deported from the country before returning to allegedly launch their illicit brothel enterprise, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
"On November 6, ICE Homeland Security Investigations executed a search and arrest warrant for a human trafficking and sexual exploitation investigation," a DHS spokesperson stated to the Daily Caller News Foundation. "HSI Law enforcement rescued three victims of these barbaric criminals."
"Thanks to the brave men and women of ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], these human traffickers and predators are off the streets," the DHS spokesperson continued. "President Trump and Secretary Noem are dismantling transnational criminal networks."
Local law enforcement received a tip in January that an individual going by the moniker "Primo," later identified as Lazcano-Vargas, was overseeing a home in the Baton Rouge area where prostitution and human trafficking were allegedly taking place, according to WAFB. The Mexican national allegedly used WhatsApp to send explicit images of females to arrange meetings with clients, with investigators later determining that his wife was a co-conspirator in the scheme.
Lazcano-Vargas was previously convicted for domestic abuse, child abuse and aggravated assault, and Guzman-Diaz was previously convicted of illegal entry, according to DHS.
...
The couple's arrest marks the second sex ring bust by immigration and local law enforcement in the Baton Rouge area. Working in coordination with ICE agents, the East Baton Rouge Sheriff's Office announced earlier in November the arrest of three Honduran nationals accused of exploiting numerous women through a similarly-run prostitution operation between May 2023 and October 2025.
...
The back-to-back sex ring busts follow GOP Gov. Jeff Landry's signing of a partnership agreement with ICE earlier this year that empowers Louisiana law enforcement agencies to enforce federal immigration laws. Dubbed "Operation Geaux," the order is intended to help local police better identify and remove criminal illegal migrants from their communities.
UK Government Is Hiding Excess Covid Vaccine Deaths Plus: Ozempic Has Killed the "Body Positivity" Movement with an Assist from Unfunny Comic Amy Schumer
Government 'withholding data that may link Covid jab to excess deaths'
UKHSA argued that releasing figures would lead to 'distress or anger' of bereaved relatives if connection were discovered
The public health watchdog has been accused of a "cover-up" after refusing to publish data that could link the Covid vaccine to excess deaths.
The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) argued that releasing the data would lead to the "distress or anger" of bereaved relatives if a link were to be discovered.
Public health officials also argued that publishing the data risked damaging the well-being and mental health of the families and friends of people who died.
Last year, a cross-party group expressed alarm about "growing public and professional concerns" over the UK's rates of excess deaths since 2020.
In a letter to UKHSA and Department for Health, the MPs and peers said that potentially critical data -- which map the date of people's Covid vaccine doses to the date of their deaths -- had been released to pharmaceutical companies but not put into the public domain.
...
UsForThem, a campaign group, requested that UKHSA release the data under freedom of information laws. But the agency refused, making a number of different arguments including that publishing the data "could lead to misinformation" that would "have an adverse impact on vaccine uptake" in the public.
...
Reform UK has committed to a public inquiry into excess deaths and alleged Covid vaccine harms.
...
Ben Kingsley, the legal director of UsForThem, said the way the UKHSA had handled the case "reveals a desperation that this data should not, in any form, see the light of day".
He added: "It is perverse for UKHSA to argue that this data should not be released because the public could feel distressed or angry if patterns or correlations were to be identified.
"You have to ask yourself why it is that the public are considered incapable of handling this data. It reveals a patronising mindset, which also characterised the pandemic response -- 'do what we say, don't ask any questions, we know what is best for you'."
The demand is for a release of anonymized data -- names stripped out.
But this agency covering up the vaccine deaths keeps lying, claiming that an anonymized list would still, somehow, reveal the identity of people killed by the clot-shot.
In more health cover-up news -- or this time, the end of a long cover-up: RFKJr. and his sexy brain-worm have updated the CDC website to clarify that claims that vaccines don't cause autism are not based in science.
The website doesn't say that vaccines do cause autism, just that the prior claims that they had been proven not to cause autism were based on bureaucratic fiat, not evidence.
CDC updates website, says claims about vaccines not causing autism are not 'evidence-based'
"HHS has launched a comprehensive assessment of the causes of autism, including investigations on plausible biologic mechanisms and potential causal links," HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon said
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has updated its website, saying that claims about vaccines not causing autism are not "evidence-based."
A previous version of the agency's webpage stated "there is no link" between receiving vaccines and developing autism, citing a 2012 National Academy of Medicine review of scientific papers and a 2013 CDC study, The Hill news outlet reported.
Late Wednesday, the website was updated and now says that the statement that vaccines do not cause autism "is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism."
The CDC also states that "studies supporting a link have been ignored by health authorities."
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has repeatedly linked vaccines and autism.
HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon said the website was updated "to reflect gold standard, evidence-based science."
In more health hoax news, Jennifer Sey notes that, now that medications can end obesity -- at least for those wealthy enough to afford it-- celebrities are no longer championing "body positivity" and "Healthy At Any Size."
Unfunny formerly-fat "comedian" Amy Schumer has deleted all of her previous Instagram photos showing her as overweight, and now only shows pictures of her being, well, skinny. Over-skinny if you ask me.
But she insists that this has nothing, nothing to do with wanting to eliminate her fat pictures. It just kinda worked out thsi way.
Comedian Amy Schumer has deleted all of her old Instagram photos and all that remains are these post weight loss pics:
Schumer captioned the post as follows: "Back on my staircase bullshit again. Who's proud? I'm feeling good and happy. Deleted my old pics for no reason!"
Right, no reason. Because that's what people do. They go back and delete all posts from the last decade. Hundreds if not thousands of posts. Totally normal and no reason at all to do that!
...
Though the pics are all gone, the comments live on (in the New York Post)!
In response to the pic on the left above, Schumer's comedian friends wrote:
Chelsea Handler: "Yes!!!!! Look at this pic!!!!"
Lee Daniels chimed in: "Skinnnnnnnny mommmmma."
Kathy Griffen added: "I'm so pissed about your legs, I can barely talk to you."
Amy Sedaris complimented her fellow Amy: "You look incredible. Look at those pins!!!"
And Schumer basked: "Loving the love. My legs thank you!"
Not only does Amy like being skinny, her friends like skinny Amy too.
Schumer has had her share of weight gain woes. She wasn't obese but certainly chubby. Relatable! Fine. She's not a super model, she's a comedian. Round cheeks, a little belly, who cares! (Schumer, apparently.)
Her jam has been all about body positivity, up until dropping 40 pounds or so.
...
Here's the thing: No one wants to be fat. No one.
All the body positivity bullshit was just that: bullshit.
No one wants to be obese. No one even wants to be chubby with arm dangles. No one wants their belly hanging over their pants. No one wants to have trouble chasing their kids around. No one wants to have 3 chins. And I can assure you -- no one in Hollywood who has to spend all day around size 0s who eat nothing but lettuce leaves wants to be fat next to those people. No one.
...
But erasing every photo she ever put up on Instagram is just a bridge too far.
Now she's mad that the internet caught on to her shenanigans -- that she's trying to erase fat Amy -- and she's big mad. She posted this on Instagram in response to the internet calling it the end of body positivity:
"Hey media outlets I didn't delete my old photos because they were pre me losing weight. That's a narrative you created. I'm proud of how I've looked always. I have been working to be pain free and I finally am. My endometriosis is better. My back is healing. I no longer have Cushing syndrome so my face went back to normal. I am grateful to be strong and healthy especially for my son. But your Instagram is not your identity it's a curation of what you want the world to see and I feel great strong and beautiful and it's been fun sharing that. I didn't purposely go on a 'weight loss journey' that's a fine thing to go on. But my focus has been on health. I'm sure my weight will always fluctuate. I'm a perimenopausal woman on hrt meds. Wishing you strength and self love on whatever path you're on as long as it's kind and respectful to all people. No matter their weight race or religion peace!"
See, it's not about deleting the photos of herself when she was fat. It's about deleting the photos of herself when she was unhealthy.
It just turns out, you know, that despite her Healthy At Any Size claims, she was less healthy when she was obese.
And of course she very deliberately went on a "weight loss journey." She stuck herself in the belly with a shot every week for a year, didn't she? What did she think was in the shot, vitamins? Midol?
I don't mind the "Healthy at Any Size"/"Fat Positivity" thing as an internal cope. We all have copes. We all have little lies we have to tell ourselves to keep the bad thoughts at bay. It's a survival mechanism and there's nothing wrong with surviving.
What got really annoying was the demand that everyone repeat, out loud, other people's copes and affirm those copes as 100% true. What got insufferable was pressuring every corporation to proclaim what should have been an internal, just you-and-your-reflection-talking-in-the-mirror cope as a Truth we must all recognize and Affirm.
We've seen a lot of this lately, with sad or even mentally-sick people demanding we all affirm their mentally-ill copes as the Revealed Truth of God Shimself.
Enough. Enough of the bullshit. Enough parroting the scripts that mentally-unwell, physically-sick people demanding we profess as God's Truth.
Anecdotally, I think this is true: eating earlier at night results in better sleep and better health. Real Clear Science:
For instance, one study found that healthy adults who ate dinner at 10pm experienced 20% higher blood sugar peaks and burned 10% less fat compared to those who ate dinner at 6pm. This was despite both groups eating identical meals and having similar bedtimes.
Broader analyses support the same trends, with a meta-analysis of 29 trials reporting that earlier eating windows, fewer meals and eating the bulk of one's calories earlier in the day were linked to greater weight loss and improved metabolic markers (such as better blood pressure and lower blood sugar and cholesterol levels).
Other research links consistent late-night eating -- especially close to bedtime -- with poorer health outcomes and a greater risk of obesity and metabolic disorders such as type 2 diabetes.
Earlier dinners may better align with the body's natural metabolic rhythms, particularly when the last meal occurs well before the body enters its "rest" phase. This might explain why eating earlier has health benefits.
Many chronobiologists conclude that aligning food intake with circadian biology represents a promising, low-cost method of improving metabolic outcomes -- especially when combined with other lifestyle factors such as physical activity and healthy eating.
In winter, especially in northern latitudes, shorter days and longer nights can disrupt circadian rhythms.
Reduced sunlight can lower serotonin levels, contributing to low mood or seasonal affective disorder (SAD). When paired with longer evenings indoors, it's common for people to snack more often or delay eating dinner until later at night.
But digestion, hormone release (including those that help with sleep and digestion) and even the amount of calories you burn throughout the day all follow circadian rhythms. When meals are pushed too close to sleep, these processes overlap in ways that can affect both metabolism and rest -- potentially increasing risks of poor sleep and metabolic ill health.
So this is a GAINZZZ post now. Got any GAINZZZ? In my own Weight Loss Journey, I expended 25 unnecessary calories thinking about Amy Schumer for the first time in a year. Every little bit helps!
I keep finding that trying to get in 20 grams of creatine a day is giving me GI problems so I'm thinking about switching from creatine monohydride (the common, cheap version you're probably familiar with) to creatine HCl. The latter supposedly doesn't cause GI issues, but, here's the fun part, it's way more expensive than creatine monohydride. Anyone else having this problem, or seeing GAINZZZ in their BRAINZZZ from creatine?
When Obama administration officials manufactured U.S. intelligence tying Donald Trump to Moscow following his stunning 2016 victory, they had no idea Trump's own political appointees would help them undermine Trump's presidency -- and his chances of reelection in 2020.
RCI's review of recently declassified documents and exclusive interviews with former Trump officials reveals for the first time how key members of Trump's cabinet and other appointees during his first term shrouded the previous administration's machinations and either deliberately or inadvertently misled the public into thinking the fake Russiagate intelligence was real.
Former Special Counsel John Durham, former National Security Adviser John Bolton, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and former CIA Director Gina Haspel dismissed or buried evidence that cast doubt on a foundational document of the Russigate hoax -- the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) prepared in the waning days of the Obama administration.
Durham, who was appointed by Attorney General William Barr, stopped the declassification and release of key exculpatory evidence debunking the ICA on the eve of the 2020 election, which has not been reported previously.
...
While these Trump-appointed officials may not have initiated the weaponization of the CIA against Trump, they facilitated it by hiding evidence that exposed the claims that Russia tried to help Trump as a fraud. By obscuring Joe Biden's own role in perpetrating the hoax, they may have helped Obama's vice president win the close race for the presidency in 2020.
"The Russiagate betrayal continued in plain sight," said former Trump national security adviser J.D. Gordon, with some in Trump's own cabinet letting him twist in the wind instead of daylighting secreted material that would have cleared the clouds of suspicion hanging over his head before the 2020 election.
John Bolton
The suppression can be traced back at least until mid-2018. That's when Fred Fleitz, who was National Security Adviser John Bolton's chief of staff, heard that investigators at his former employer, the House Intelligence Committee, were probing the raw intelligence in the ICA supporting the assessment's key judgments.
A one-time CIA analyst himself, Fleitz was curious to learn what they had found during the previous year, interviewing CIA analysts and reviewing secret documents at Langley. So, he traveled to the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue and read a draft of the highly classified report in a secure room of the U.S. Capitol.
Fleitz told RealClearInvestigations that he was startled to learn that the investigators discovered numerous intelligence documents showing the ICA's key conclusion -- that Russia "developed a clear preference" for Trump and "aspired to help" him win the election -- was based on shoddy and fabricated intelligence. House investigators found those assessments were supported in part by the Steele dossier, a series of Clinton campaign-funded reports containing baseless accusations linking Trump to the Kremlin compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele.
"The ICA misrepresented both the significance and credibility of the dossier reports," which were "either proven false or unsubstantiated," the top-secret congressional analysis noted. "The ICA referred to the dossier as 'Russian plans and intentions,' falsely implying that the dossier had intelligence value for understanding Moscow's influence operations."
Fleitz thought Bolton should be briefed on the unpublished House report, which undermined the prevailing narrative that Trump and Moscow had colluded during the 2016 election campaign. When he returned to his West Wing office, Fleitz sat down at his classified computer and wrote a synopsis of the review and gave it to his boss.
But Bolton did not, in turn, brief the president. "He didn't do anything with it. He never told Trump, and I never heard anything about it again," Fleitz told RCI.
If Trump had known about the shocking revelations from the classified report, Fleitz said, he could have used them to remove the cloud of suspicion hanging over his presidency concerning Russia.
...
Gina Haspel
Pompeo's deputy at the time was Gina Haspel, who appears to have played a much more active role in drawing a veil over the information. A veteran CIA official whom Pompeo had put in charge of most of the day-to-day operations of the agency, she apparently didn't appreciate congressional staffers investigating the agency's spycraft that went into the highly classified and restricted version of the ICA.
Sources told RCI she made sure the investigators' on-site examination, which spanned from 2017 to 2020, was closely monitored and tightly controlled. The House investigators had to be cleared into a "read room" at Langley each day to examine the records the CIA used to support the ICA. And they were forced to lock up their laptops and materials there when they left at night.
"Haspel didn't allow them to take even their notes out of their workspace there," Harvey said. "They couldn't take anything out of the building."
Another House Intelligence Committee source familiar with the operation said the investigators suspected the CIA "was spying on [committee] computers" back on Capitol Hill. They reported back to then-committee chairman Devin Nunes that the CIA had tampered with the computers the agency forced them to use to draft their report inside headquarters -- and this was only after they were denied access to any computers in the first four months of their oversight investigation.
"Deliberate technical modifications to the [CIA-issued] computers made the machines unstable and unreliable," which slowed down investigators' work, according to a committee report documenting the CIA's efforts to "obstruct" their probe.
The report, which was obtained by RCI, added: "Peculiar machine glitches caused lines of text to appear fuzzy, forcing restarts to correct and sometimes resulting in lost text or footnotes."
The investigators repeatedly requested "proper computers" to support the review, but were never provided with them. They were also denied software tools that would have allowed them to efficiently search large volumes of classified and unclassified reporting at the agency. Thousands of pages of intelligence reports relevant to the ICA were available only in paper form. The staffers had to comb through thick binders with broken rings and missing tab dividers, further hamstringing their audit.
Pompeo and Haspel also placed restrictions on their access to Brennan's five hand-picked authors of the ICA, who initially were kept at arm's length.
"It took nearly five months for committee staff to be allowed to in
...
After she took over the CIA, she locked up all drafts of the House Intelligence Committee report in a gun safe inside a vault in a highly secure room at CIA headquarters until she left office in January 2021. She also impounded all the examiners' notes and other work materials.
"Gina Haspel buried the report," Harvey said.
Knowledgeable sources say that before Haspel left, she demanded that both Barr and Durham keep the report classified and not release any part of it before the 2020 election.
"In 2020, Gina Haspel was running around with her hair on fire saying it should never see the light of day," a former senior official at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said. "I still cannot believe that she was President Trump's CIA director. It's totally insane."
Read the whole thing.
Related: Obama's and Biden's henchmen in the FBI spied on GOP House leader Jim Jordan's phones and emails for... two years.
House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan on Thursday revealed that the Biden administration subpoenaed his phone records for a two-year period as part of the Arctic Frost investigation, making his records more expansive than other lawmakers.
The announcement comes after recent revelations claimed the Biden FBI snooped on the phone records of Republican members of Congress, including eight senators, during its January 6 investigation.
Jordan said his phone records were requested by Justice Department prosecutor Timothy Duree, who worked with Thomas Windom, one of Jack Smith's top prosecutors, in April 2022. The request sought his phone records from Jan. 1, 2020, through April 2022.
The toll records did not include the contents of Jordan's phone calls or messages but did include details about inbound and outbound calls, text messages, direct-connect communications and voicemail messages.
The subpoena was also accompanied by a nondisclosure order that claimed notifying Jordan of the subpoena could "result in flight from prosecution, destruction of or tampering with evidence, intimidation of potential witnesses, and serious jeopardy to the investigation."
The footage contains a previously nonpublic segment showing the alleged pipe bomber approaching the Congressional Black Caucus Institute building near Capitol Hill and kneeling down near a bush on the property, Loudermilk told Just the News.
Just the News reviewed the footage and confirmed the lawmaker's description.
"We've tracked that path with security camera footage that we have access to, but they missed one key aspect...they made a stop as they walked past the Congressional Black Caucus, turned, and went on to the property and knelt down by a bush. Now this is the first real stop that the pipe bomber made," Loudermilk told the John Solomon Reports podcast on Thursday.
"Now this is before they actually placed the bomb at the DNC. So, what were they doing there at the Congressional Black Caucus? No bomb was found there," Loudermilk said.
Nasty White Karen Running to Take a Nashville House Seat from Republicans Admits On Tape That She Hates All of Nashville, Especially Its People
—Ace
Black Phone for Karen...
Black Phone for Karen...
The special election will be held on December 5th 2nd. [It's the first Tuesday in December.] You'd think this would sink her, but, as David Strom notes, Virginia liberals just voted for a top prosecutor who openly lusts to murder his opponents and see their children die in the arms of their mother, so this is no gimme.
Do not underestimate the AWFL vote. It is huge and angry and hypermedicated and healthy at any size and determined to teach its ex-husbands a lessons. Many lessons.
Fox News:
Democratic congressional hopeful Aftyn Behn did not hold back when describing how she really feels about Nashville -- the city she's now running to represent -- in a 2020 podcast that's resurfaced just days before the Dec. 2 special election.
"I hate the city, I hate the bachelorettes, I hate the pedal taverns, I hate country music, I hate all of the things that make Nashville apparently an 'it' city to the rest of the country. But I hate it," she said in the podcast.
Behn, a Democratic state representative and former healthcare community organizer, is running against Republican nominee Matt Van Epps to represent Tennessee's 7th Congressional District. The winner will succeed former GOP Rep. Mark Green, who resigned from office in June to take a private sector job.
The district, which is located in central and western Tennessee and stretches from Kentucky to Alabama, is solidly red. President Donald Trump carried the district by 22 points in his 2024 White House victory.
But the district includes parts of the Democratic stronghold of Nashville, Tennessee's capital and its most populous city, and a major national center for the country music industry. The district encompasses parts of north and west Nashville, including the downtown area which has long been a very popular tourist destination.
"The Democrat running in a special election for Tennessee's 7th Congressional District, Aftyn Behn, is running on the message: 'I hate this place, elect me!' Tennessee deserves better," the Republican National Committee (RNC) argued in a social media post on Thursday.
“She calls herself a radical, brags about bullying ICE agents and state troopers, and proudly says she ran on ‘protecting trans children. Wild.” pic.twitter.com/QHN6cIIS1c
Speaking of AWFLs: Do not discount the fact that many are supported by their parents until age 30 and then their husbands (and then their ex-husbands) all their lives so they basically live on cradle-to-altar-to-grave socialism. So they just don't understand why everyone just can't sponge off daddy and hubby forever.
Socialist mayor-elect reveals why she embraced her parents giving her money as a 43-year-old
Katie Wilson, 43, said openness about taking her parents' money during campaign made her 'relatable' to voters
Seattle Mayor-elect Katie Wilson, 43, said now that she has been elected mayor and is earning more money as a result, she no longer needs to ask her parents for help to pay the bills.
Wilson, who recently told CNN she thought embracing the help she got from her parents made her more "relatable" to Seattle voters, quipped on social media that, "after much deliberation and a grueling interview process," she was "pleased" to announce that her higher salary as mayor will mean she no longer needs financial support from her parents.
During Wilson's campaign, she credited her parents' financial support for allowing her to run.
"My opponent's campaign and the corporate PAC that tried to stop my election certainly cast it as a negative thing," Wilson responded when asked whether she thought people in Seattle saw her parents' financial support as a negative or a positive.
...
Wilson added that it isn't unusual for parents to help their children with money but also noted she recognized her "privilege."
"You know, families help each other out, and I certainly acknowledge that I'm lucky to be in a position where my parents were able to do that. Not all families have that privilege," Wilson said. "And that's why I'm going to fight for affordable childcare and affordable housing for every family in this city."
In fairness, male (or "male") socialists also usually have never worked a job until they get themselves elected as Democrat politicians. John Fetterman -- pre-Lumpy-Jack -- was a trust fund baby who lived with his parents deep into adulthood, and Bernie Sanders was famously a hippie couch-surfer who never worked a job until he got elected as a politician.
The Democrat Party is made up of two major blocs: Poor people who are on government welfare and who think that money is made by someone printing a check, and rich nepo babies on family welfare who think that money is made by daddy signing a check. Neither of these groups understand the effort required to earn a buck, so they have no actual appreciation for money as a stored form of previously-exerted labor.
The Islamoleftist Mamdani did not ever have a job until he was elected to New York Assembly at age 30.
🚨 KAROLINE LEAVITT responds to President Trump’s Oval Office meeting with Zohran Mamdani tomorrow
“It speaks volumes that tomorrow, we have a COMMUNIST coming to the White House — because that's who the Democrat Party elected as the mayor of the largest city in the country.” pic.twitter.com/WD1zQAWJIw
Update: I should have filed this with the last post. It makes the "anarchy for some, tyranny for others" point.
Disgraced ex-Harvard president Larry Summers reportedly spent his honeymoon on Jeffrey Epstein's notorious private island -- flying from Massachusetts on the convicted billionaire pedophile's jet with Ghislaine Maxwell, flight records show.
Summers flew to Saint James on Epstein's infamous "Lolita Express" with his wife, Elisa F. New, shortly after their Dec. 11, 2005, wedding in Cambridge, and was accompanied by the disgraced financier's infamous madam, who was later convicted on sex trafficking charges, the Harvard Crimson reported Thursday.
"Mr. Summers and Ms. New spent their honeymoon in St. John and Jamaica in December 2005, which was long before Mr. Epstein was arrested for the first time," a spokesperson for Summers told the outlet.
"As part of that trip, they made a brief visit of less than a day to Mr. Epstein's island."
The island getaway came six months after Palm Beach police began investigating Epstein for the rape of a 14-year-old girl, with a search warrant later executed on his mansion in October 2005.
Flight logs show Summers flew to the 72-acre Caribbean island on Dec. 21, 2005 -- and took Epstein's jet, allegedly used to ferry victims and accomplices in his sex-trafficking rings, three other times.
Three of the trips occurred while the 70-year-old was serving as Harvard's president.
Summers would be sucking up to Epstein because Epstein was a donor to Harvard, and, as Johnny Chung said, "if you want to ride the subway, you have to put tokens in the slots." If you donate to the left-wing Regime, the subways go anywhere you want them to go.
In 2003, The Harvard Crimson gushed all over Jeffrey Epstein and how he was best buddies with so many Harvard academicians and alums.
"And Summers is not the only person at Harvard whom Epstein admires--or who admires Epstein.
"Epstein counts a number of professors--including Dershowitz, Lindsley Professor of Psychology Stephen M. Kosslyn and former Dean of the Faculty Henry A. Rosovsky--among his bevy of eminent friends that includes princes, presidents and Nobel-Prize winners.
"The relationships Epstein has formed inside and outside the scientific community are particularly impressive, given that he is self-taught and does not even hold a bachelor's degree.
"Kosslyn was introduced to Epstein by the famed late Harvard professor and evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould, and Dershowitz says he met Epstein through "mutual friends."
"Rosovsky, Epstein's oldest friend in the bunch, met the mogul through similarly serendipitous circumstances. Twelve years ago, "we were introduced by a mutual friend, Mr. Leslie Wexner," Rosovsky writes in an e-mail.
"Wexner, the billionaire who founded Limited Brands--whose empire now includes Victoria's Secret, Bath & Body Works and Express--is also a longtime Harvard benefactor.
"Epstein and Wexner, longtime friends and business associates, teamed up in the early 1990s to fund the construction of Harvard-Radcliffe Hillel's new building, Rosovsky Hall."
A Queens senior citizen who shot dead a man who tried to rob him will spend four years in prison after admitting to toting an unlicensed revolver -- as his lawyer ripped the city's "draconian" gun laws.
Charles Foehner, 67, pleaded guilty to one count of criminal weapons possession Thursday in a deal to end his case more than two years after he fatally shot would-be thief Cody Gonzalez, who charged at him near his Kew Gardens home.
The Queens District Attorney's Office chose not to prosecute Foehner, a retired doorman, for Gonzalez's killing after he told cops that he'd defended himself from a mugger who lunged at him late at night holding what looked like a knife -- but which turned out to be a pen.
But prosecutors slapped Foehner with a slew of weapons raps for the unlicensed handgun and for an arsenal of illicit handguns, revolvers and rifles inside his home in the quiet neighborhood.
Foehner took the plea deal to avoid a trial, where he faced 25 years in prison on gun charges that are not hard to prove, said his attorney Thomas Kenniff after Thursday's hearing in Queens Supreme Court.
Kenniff called Foehner a "hero" who was put in an "impossible position" by what he called "draconian" Big Apple gun laws that make it difficult for "law abiding citizens" to obtain permits to carry firearms.
"If this was a state and a city that had its affairs in order, Mr Foehner would be getting a plaque, not a prison sentence," Kenniff told reporters on the courthouse steps.
A term that's enjoying new popularity -- because it describes the hell that the left is imposing on us -- is "anarchotyranny."
The idea is that we live in a tyranny filled with lawlessness (anarchy). Those seem to be opposites, which would make anarchotyranny a contradiction in terms, but you have to remember that only some get tyranny while others get anarchy.
If you're a rapist, a mugger, a killer, a drug-dealer, an illegal alien, you get anarchy, with the government staying out of your business and letting you harm your fellow citizens and ply your criminal trade with little government interference.
But if you're among the working population with a family and a mortgage and commitments you just can't walk away from, you get the tyranny, the endless laws, the endless demands for you to get a permit to do every single thing that free men used to do freely, and strict and brutal punishment from the state when you ignore a law here and there. Don't you know that only the hardcore criminals get to ignore the laws with impunity?
Adam Carolla has been ranting about this for years, although I don't think he used the word "anarchotyranny." (If you know where these clips are, let me know.)
He points out that you will be permitted to death if you dare try to add an extension to your house, and it will cost you $50,000 just to get that permit.
Meanwhile, illegal aliens can set up shantytown food carts on the street with no inspections and no authorization to block the sidewalks, and the cops will just walk on by.
If you want to expand your business, the state wants to stop you.
But if homeless people want to block traffic selling flowers car to car, that's fine. No problem.
The left wants to control people, and so they focus on the group of people who actually will obey all (or most) of the laws they pass: the naturally, inherently law-abiding. The people who can't afford to spend six months or a year in jail.
Meanwhile, for the criminal class: complete freedom to do whatever they want to do.
In the UK, they outlawed guns ages ago, and then outlawed swords and machetes and common knives.
And an "influencer" in the US wants that hellscape for us:
There’s a dude on tiktok who gives bottles and cigs to the homeless every day and his latest vid has him passing out machetes 😭 pic.twitter.com/rhxwrGgTsC
Economy Adds 119,000 Jobs Even When Deliberately Sabotaged by Democrats, Doubling Expectations
—Ace
This report is from September. The Democrats hadn't yet shut the government down -- that started October 1 -- but everyone understood they were going to shut it down. The Democrats created uncertainty and fear, which is always bad for economic growth. People don't like to take out loans and take chances on new businesses or new construction when the future looks dicey.
The U.S. economy added 119,000 jobs in September, according to a Labor Department report released Thursday.
The release of the report was delayed by the roughly 40-day government shutdown that shuttered federal agencies.
The number of jobs exceeded Wall Street expectations, according to CNBC.
In fact, the eXpErTs had predicted less than half that.
Employers across the U.S. added 119,000 jobs in September, marking a pickup after previous employment data had shown a slowdown in hiring. The report marks the first official job tally since the government shutdown ended last week, ending a six-week blackout on labor data.
Economists had forecast payroll gains of 50,000 jobs in September, according to a poll by FactSet.
The unemployment rate rose 4.4% in September, up from 4.3% in August and the highest level since Oct. 2021. With robust job growth in September, that suggests more people are re-entering the workforce to search for a job, economists said.
119,000 jobs in a month still isn't good, but given the strains the Democrats are putting on the economy, it's okay.
And also, I should admit, Trump is putting strains on the economy, too, with an uncertain trade environment due to frequent tariff saber-rattling and an uncertain labor environment with millions of illegals -- who took jobs from Americans -- being deported. Both of these moves will have long-term payoffs but in the short term they're weighing the economy down, and I'm starting to get worried about how much time we have left before the midterms to have a good economy the public actually acknowledges as good.
Some good news:
Townhall.com
@townhallcom
ECONOMIC GAINS:
--119,000 NEW JOBS jobs added in Sept. (Double expectations)
--19,000 Construction jobs added in Sept.
--Nearly ALL Jobs going to AMERICANS not Foreign Born Workers.
--Wages UP 3.8%
"This is a REVERSAL of the failed Biden Era."
More of this
Eric Daugherty
@EricLDaugh
BREAKING: In a jaw-dropping win, 2.57 MILLION native-born Americans gained jobs since President Trump assumed office...
...and over 1 million migrants LOST employment.
In total, 1.23 million foreigners left the labor force.
Nature is healing, folks. Big time.
There are some numbers that hint that the economy may experience its second Trump Boom:
ATL Fed: not only is GDP currently estimated to have grown 4.2% for Q3 but the gain is primarily driven by big increases in private spending and private investment, not gov't: pic.twitter.com/pGoJx0Qzuv
The forward-looking manufacturer sentiment (the orders they expect to fill in the next year) is higher than it's been in a year:
PHL Fed: general manufacturing activity declines only marginally in Nov after a steep drop in Oct, held back by new orders and shipments putting in lowest readings since Apr, but expected activity in the future zoomed higher, putting in highest reading in a year: pic.twitter.com/0N5y3gf4SG
And this is the best September ever for jobs for Americans.
What a concept, that the American economy should advantage Americans.
This was the best Sep ever for number of native-born Americans w/ jobs, growing 3.2 million more over previous 12 months than the change in number of jobs among foreign-born workers: pic.twitter.com/ERkXtSeXjH
Behind the Restaurant Meal Delivery Industry, there is a Black Market Exploiting Illegal Foreign Labor
—Buck Throckmorton
If you are having restaurant food “dashed” to your residence, there is a very good chance that the person delivering your meal is part of a black market of non-citizen labor, illegally subcontracted by the actual “independent contractor” of Door Dash, Uber Eats, and the like.
Two years ago, the New York Times published a highly sympathetic article about this industry, focusing on the awful plight of illegal immigrants dumped in Ney York City but not eligible to work, and how sub-contracted food delivery provides a source of income. All the same, the Times did acknowledge the exploitation of this illegal workforce, documenting the financial arrangement under which Venezuelan “migrant” Mayco Milano operated. Specifically, the business model under which Mr. Milano delivers food is:
• An unlicensed moped is rented for $400 per week from a black-market moped broker.
• Login access to an Uber Eats account is rented for $150 per week from “Jessica.”
• Mr. Milano works long hours, 7 days a week, delivering food throughout Manhattan and Brooklyn. The commission before tip is about $4 per delivery.
• At $550 per week for the combined rent of the moped and Uber Eats login, divided by the $4 commission per delivery, it takes about 135 food deliveries per week before Mr. Milano breaks even.
• “Jessica” is the one getting paid by Uber Eats. She then pays Mr. Milano and her other subs in cash, after taking her administrative fee for subcontracting her Uber Eats login to them. Not every “Jessica” reliably pays their subs, however, and the subs obviously have no recourse when Jessica pockets their earnings.
A few weeks ago, Pirate Wires published a sobering article by Sagnik Basu that details the extent of the exploitation of people such as Mayco Milano, while also shaming the smug consumers who believe they are the good guys for providing a living to off-the-books food dashers. This article was subsequently re-published by The Free Press, but the Pirate Wires version is not behind a paywall:
This is one of those “read every word” articles, which I encourage you to do, but here are a few pull quotes:
Walk through Midtown at night and the story writes itself. Gas-powered mopeds idle in clusters outside the Roosevelt Hotel, their headlights cutting through steam from the street vents. Riders sit slumped over paper cups of coffee, helmets at their feet. Upstairs, people in $4,000/month apartments track their Uber Eats orders on their phones: “Your Thai curry is six minutes away.” Everyone in this city knows what’s going on. We just don’t say it out loud.
Outside the Roosevelt Hotel or shelters in Queens, you can buy a complete starter kit: moped, helmet, insulated bag, and Uber Eats login — “todo junto,” all together. Ads circulate through WhatsApp groups and Facebook Marketplace targeting Venezuelan and Guinean migrants. It’s an informal franchise system that works because everyone involved is desperate enough to honor it.
Most riders are paid in cash. There are no 1099s, no payroll records, no worker’s comp when they crash on wet pavement. The city forfeits tax revenue; the companies forfeit liability; the riders forfeit everything.
What we call the “gig economy” is, in practice, a debt-and-fear economy — one that goes unchallenged in hyper-progressive places like NYC precisely because liberals have redefined “compassion” as ignoring the law.
The young professional who tweets “abolish ICE” orders pad thai at 11 p.m. from a rider whose entire existence depends on ICE looking the other way. They think guilt-tipping 35 percent makes them virtuous. But it’s just exploitation offset by sentiment.
If Uber Eats or DoorDash can build billion-dollar machine-learning models to predict delivery times, they can build one to verify who’s actually delivering.
This will come with costs. When you close the pipeline of illegal labor, prices will rise. Fewer $10 burritos at 11 p.m. More delivery fees. More friction. Good. Because that’s the real price of legality. If we want a humane system, it has to be lawful first. You have to enforce the border, punish exploitation, and end the moral outsourcing that lets you feel good while someone else breaks the law for you.
If compassion means preserving a shadow economy of fear, debt, and exhaustion, then it’s not compassion at all. It’s exploitation wrapped in virtue.
Coincidentally, just a few days after publication of the Pirate Wire piece, Culper Research issued a devastating research opinion to investors about Door Dash’s business model, while also advising that Culper was taking a short position in Door Dash stock (meaning they expect the stock price to drop). Per Culper Research’s website, Culper is a watchdog that seeks “to expose companies which have misrepresented their operations, failed to disclose significant risks, misused capital, possess accounting irregularities, or otherwise deceived investors.”
Below this tweet from Culper, I’ll spotlight a few key quotes and findings from their 29-page Research Opinion about Door Dash.
NEW: We are short DoorDash $DASH, the largest food delivery group in the U.S. We believe DoorDash has engaged in a covert multi-year scheme to "backdoor" unauthorized workers, both at unprecedented scale and unique to $DASH. Full report and disclaimers at https://t.co/4MDshx5BeT
We are short DoorDash, Inc. (“DASH”, “the Company”), the largest app-based food delivery company in the U.S. Based on our extensive research, we believe DoorDash has quietly onboarded unauthorized and unvetted contract workers at a scale that is both unprecedented in U.S. corporate history and unique to the Company.
In late 2021, DoorDash quietly dropped delivery courier (“Dasher”) SSN requirements and created an industry-unique “backdoor” to onboard unauthorized workers via individual taxpayer ID numbers (“ITINs”). We estimate unauthorized Dashers have since become responsible for 26% to 57% of Company-wide deliveries.
Regulators are cracking down. An “unprecedented” April 2025 ICE/IRS partnership now puts ITIN holders and their employers in federal crosshairs. DoorDash also appears to be subject to an undisclosed SEC investigation, per a July 2025 Freedom of Information Act request.
DoorDash portrays Dashing as a “side hustle” opportunity for everyday Americans, but we believe the Company’s business has become predicated on this core group of effectively full-time, unauthorized Dashers.
Meanwhile, DoorDash’s own public data implies that in Q4 2022, just 12% of Dashers were responsible for 50% of deliveries.
In May 2025, DoorDash was sued by a former Security Engineer, who alleges that he was fired after finding “hundreds of [Dasher] identities tied to shared residential addresses” that were “linked to a broad spectrum of criminal activity including identity theft, financial fraud, robbery, and tax evasion.”
In sum, we believe DoorDash has been uniquely able to tap into a completely new labor market – millions of individuals arriving in America who are desperate to work, unable to qualify for employment, and will work for less than minimum wage. Only by exploiting this labor pool is DoorDash able to operate profitably.
These are some pretty serious allegations, and if not true, Culper would be making itself liable for defamation. But its research paper is thorough, detailed, and rigorously footnoted as to the data it uses to make its opinions.
Door Dash stock has dropped about 30% since this report came out a month ago.
I have never used Uber Eats, Door Dash, Grub Hub, or any similar businesses, so I have no experiences to relate. I also do not know whether illegal subcontracted labor is foundational to their business model, or if it’s simply a predictable consequence of a vast network of “independent contractors” finding it profitable to franchise their Contractor Agreements to an illegal workforce.
What I do know is that when millions of illegal foreign nationals who may not legally work in this country are dumped into American cities, a black market for their labor will naturally develop. Whether it’s intentional or not, it is disgraceful that illegal, black-market labor is the retail face of publicly traded companies in the year 2025.
Good morning kids. Here we are barely two weeks after New Yorkers went to the polls and elected a Muslim/Socialist mayor of the world's most Jewish city by population though certainly not in spirit or character. To add the most horrific insult to injury, that abomination came just a few days shy of the 87th anniversary of Kristalnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass where Synagogues and Jewish owned businesses were burned to the ground and ransacked with the full knowledge and approval of the Hitlerite Nazi German regime in reaction to the shooting death of a German diplomat in France by a distraught young Polish Jew. And by the next day thousands of Jews were rounded up and sent off and imprisoned. It marked what is recognized as the start of what became known as the Holocaust, a genocide which by the end of the Second World war claimed the lives of at least 6 million of Europe's Jews.
As kind of an aside, The Leftists are shrieking about ICE separating families and deporting illegal aliens and likening it to Nazis rounding up Jews, then using that as a justification to assault ICE and other law enforcement agents while amplifying the trope of President Trump as literally Hitler and all of us who support him as Nazis, fascists and white supremacists who must be resisted by any means necessary!
Columbia University student groups promoted a protest at which an anti-Semitic mob threw bottles and sticks at a Jewish group, which included at least two Holocaust survivors, outside a historic Manhattan synagogue.
Roughly 200 keffiyeh-clad agitators gathered outside the Park East Synagogue on Wednesday to protest an event hosted by Nefesh B’Nefesh, a nonprofit group that facilitates Jewish immigration to Israel, the synagogue’s cantor, Benny Rogosnitzky, told the Washington Free Beacon. The sticks and bottles they threw at a group of Jewish counter-protesters of about the same size injured at least one member of the synagogue, he said. . . The protest was organized by PAL-Awda NY/NJ, which has honored Oct. 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar as a "hero" and a "legend." Columbia University Apartheid Divest and the Columbia chapter of Students for a Democratic Society promoted the event on social media, sharing a flyer that read "NO SETTLERS ON STOLEN LAND." It also accused Nefesh B’Nefesh of holding a "settler recruiting fair" and listed the address of Park East Synagogue, which is led by Rabbi Arthur Schneier, a 95-year-old Holocaust survivor. . . In response to Wednesday night’s protest, Mamdani, through a spokeswoman, suggested that Nefesh B’Nefesh’s mission of bringing Jews to Israel violates international law.
Wait! Students For A Democratic Society I thought that that group disintegrated decades ago. Its members have got to be well into their 80s by now, if not rotting in hell. Meh, the friggin' Berlin Wall came down in 1990 and evidently it landed right on top of us. . .
This week, he reiterated his intention to honor the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) warrant for Netanyahu’s arrest, should the Israeli leader ever visit New York City under his leadership. This is a position that he has maintained since his campaign, which was quite popular among the anti-Israel leftists in New York.
The salient point though is this is not about Netanyahu or Israel per se. This is about Islam and its unending crusade (pun absolutely intended) to conquer the world. In doing so its goals are first and foremost the death of every Jew and the subjugation, forced conversion or death of every other infidel or anyone who resists. It is self-evident in that staging a violent assault on a synagogue and those inside be they Jew or Gentile, that is thousands of miles from Israel (or the mythical land of "Palestine") has nothing to do with anything other than an act of terrorism.
And Zohran Mamdani hasn't even been sworn in. Maybe Jeremiah Wright can brush up on his Arabic and declare his famous words of G-damn America with Mamdani's reptilian claw on that accursed Koran.
A Queens senior citizen who shot dead a man who tried to rob him will spend four years in prison after admitting to toting an unlicensed revolver — as his lawyer ripped the city’s “draconian” gun laws.
Charles Foehner, 67, pleaded guilty to one count of criminal weapons possession Thursday in a deal to end his case more than two years after he fatally shot would-be thief Cody Gonzalez, who charged at him near his Kew Gardens home.
The Queens District Attorney’s Office chose not to prosecute Foehner, a retired doorman, for Gonzalez’s killing after he told cops that he’d defended himself from a mugger who lunged at him late at night holding what looked like a knife — but which turned out to be a pen.
You better believe that no one will be safe from mere criminals to organized terrorists hunting Jews and infidels. In the wake of the Al Sharpton fomented Crown Heights pogrom of 1981, a number of Jewish safety patrols were formed in the orthodox and Hassidic neighborhoods, supported by the NYPD as an official arm of the Auxiliary police. it's a fair bet that Mamdani will have them disbanded as soon as he gets the chance.
And if anyone dares to effectively engage in self defense, every juror unlucky enough to pull jury duty will never vote to acquit lest they endanger themselves and their families.
Consider Dearborn, Michigan, population just north of 100,000. If you were ranking American cities by population, Dearborn wouldn’t even crack the top 300. But the population that Dearborn does have is highly significant. Dearborn currently has a larger proportion of Muslims than any other city in the United States, and it recently became the first Arab-majority city in the country. Fully 55% of Dearborn’s residents say they have Middle Eastern or North African ancestry — which explains why Dearborn boasts the largest mosque in the entire continent of North America. Dearborn, as I’ve said before, is an Islamic capital at this point. It’s not an American city in any way. Dearborn has been conquered. And the few remaining Americans in Dearborn are now finding themselves surrounded by mobs of Muslims chanting Allahu Akbar, and telling them to leave the city.
This is footage that was taken by Nick Shirley, one of the few journalists who’s willing to travel to Dearborn. The footage shows Shirley attempting to interview an activist named Jake Lang — who was one of the pardoned January 6 defendants. But the interview doesn’t go anywhere, because at this point, Dearborn resembles Fallujah. . .
. . . To be clear about what we just saw: If you’re an American citizen, and the mob of Muslims that controls Dearborn believes that you’re a “racist,” then you’re not welcome in the city any longer. Your constitutional rights to freedom of expression are suspended. You will be surrounded and hounded. And indeed, that’s the official position of the government of Dearborn. It was just a few weeks ago, you may remember, that the mayor of Dearborn, Abdullah Hammoud, publicly berated a Christian pastor, telling him that he’s not “welcome” in the city because of his views. (This is the same mayor who, as we discussed yesterday, said he “disavows” the concept of assimilation.) So this tactic of driving out Americans who disagree with the Islamization of the city extends not just to the mob but to government officials in the city as well. That’s what makes this, among other things, a constitutional crisis.
For those who think that this madness will remain in NYC or Dearborn, or wherever else, and ultimately burn itself out, think again because you're whistling past a gate to hell — with the words "Arbeit Macht Frei" on them.
The Democrat Party, even in your neck of the woods is fully on board with this, if not publicly than for sure behind closed doors. And it matters not that you might be in a very dark and deep Red city or state. This cancer is still there. And most dangerously, it's in our schools.
Report: MN Somali Medicaid Fraud Investigation Reveals Terrorist Link — ‘Largest Funder of Al-Shabaab is the Minnesota Taxpayer’ . . .But the fraud is far more widespread with far more money involved than was previously reported — all of which has been presided over by former Democrat Party vice-presidential nominee Gov. Tim Walz.
The money paid out by Minnesota’s scandal-plagued welfare schemes is monumental. The state’s failed Medicaid Housing Stabilization Services program, for instance, was kicked off in 2021 with expenses expected to ring in at $2.6 million. But instead, the program paid out $21 million its first year. In each subsequent year the program ballooned to $42 million, then $74, and then $104 million, respectively. During the first half of 2025, costs had already reached $61 million, according to City Journal.
Fraud is also endemic in many of Minnesota’s other welfare programs. City Journal noted that a Somali woman named Asha Farhan Hassan has been charged with defrauding the state’s Early Intensive Developmental and Behavioral Intervention program of $14 million over fake diagnoses of autism in children of Somali migrants.
Prosecutors now say that Hassan and her cohorts approached Somali families and promised them kickbacks of between $300 to $1500 a month per child if they enrolled in the state’s autism treatment programs.
Have a great weekend.
And lastly, a quick shout-out and thank you for your continued support in hitting our tip jar. It truly is appreciated more than you can know.
Hundreds of pro-'Palestinian' activistsTerrorists besieged Manhattan’s prestigious Park East Synagogue on Wednesday night, chanting, “Globalize the intifada,” “Death to the IDF,” and “take another settler out,” in what critics warned is “just the beginning” of a radicalized climate under socialist Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani. (Uh, it's the Islam not the socialism at work here, though you'll never hear a peep of outrage about this from the socialists - jjs) Pro-'Palestinian' Activists Besiege NYC Synagogue: ‘Mamdani Era Has Already Begun’
A group financially linked to George and Alex Soros’s Open Society Foundations is behind a class action lawsuit brought by illegal aliens who are suing President Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for fining them after they have failed to self-deport from the United States. Soros-Funded Group Behind Lawsuit to Stop DHS Fining Illegal Aliens for Failing to Self-Deport
“We’ve got to move with quicker urgency. So that’s — the gut punch that the working class took in this country over the four years of Biden can’t be overstated. I mean, they totally and completely gutted our working class. They brought in millions, 10-plus million foreign workers, caused a housing crisis, caused an insurance crisis, caused a food crisis, then they did all the things that they did during COVID which just created incredible amounts of depression among young people [and] raised the price of automobiles,” the senator said, laying out the sad state of affairs. Sen. Bernie Moreno: Democrats ‘Gutted Our Working Class’ Importing 10 Million Foreign Workers
“Untold millions” of state dollars flowed from Minnesota-based Somalis to the overseas group, including funds from Minnesota’s Department of Human Services (DHS), according to the outlet. Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s administration is now under scrutiny after federal probes revealed rampant fraud in a DHS program meant to help struggling residents find taxpayer-funded housing. (RELATED: Soft-On-Crime Somali-Born Democrat Gets Carjacked By Reality) Blue State Somalis Allegedly Sent Welfare Money To Al-Qaeda Ally Planning Another 9/11
“Wages continue to way outpace inflation,” Vance told Breitbart News’s Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle at a policy event. “If you go back to the three years of the Biden junta, the average American worker actually lost about $3,000 in take-home pay. In the first 10 months of the Trump economy, we’ve increased take home pay by about $1,200 adjusting for inflation. So that’s a huge, huge thing.” Exclusive: JD Vance Touts Big Wage Gains Amid Affordability Concerns
Many women cover their hair with scarves, but covering the face is a step too far. Use of the niqab or burqa signals a pivot to Islamic fundamentalism. Columbia University should ban the niqab on campus
Things go from bad to worse – surprise! – in America’s most Muslim municipality. Dark Days in Dearborn
FIRST AMENDMENT ISSUES, CENSORSHIP, FAKE NEWS, MEDIA, BIG BROTHER TECH
ABC News might soon find itself staring down another expensive defamation lawsuit from President Trump, and honestly, it wouldn't come as a shock. On a recent episode of The View, Joy Behar confidently claimed that it was "obvious" Trump was a pedophile connected with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, implicating him in Epstein’s crimes. This wild accusation came without a shred of evidence tying Trump to Epstein’s criminal activities. In fact, Trump is arguably one of the few prominent figures who did the right thing and severed ties with Epstein years ago, unlike many Democrats who have since been ensnared in the fallout. Joy Behar Just Put ABC on the Brink of Another Huge Trump Lawsuit
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has been at the forefront of President Donald Trump’s effort to make the country energy independent. Burgum, a former North Dakota governor, software entrepreneur, and venture capitalist, has overseen the administration’s efforts to reopen oil and gas drilling across millions of acres in Alaska, to end a ban on liquefied natural gas exports, and to boost offshore oil production Q&A With Interior Secretary Doug Burgum on ‘Energy Dominance’ and Gavin Newsom’s ‘Shrinking’ California
As the Department of Education considers how to move programs out of the department, they should consider opportunities to improve the value of the federal education R&D enterprise to improve learning opportunities for American children. A New Strategy to Promote Innovation in Education
L'AFFAIRE EPSTEIN
David Harsanyi: If Americans want to speculate on Epstein, that’s their right. Maybe their theories will be proven correct. But long-standing norms regarding privacy and the presumption of innocence shouldn’t be trashed by cowardly politicians every time the mob howls. Epstein vote is a stain on cowardly Congress — who won’t stand up for the rule of law
Grammy-winning rapper Prakazrel “Pras” Michel of the Fugees was sentenced on Thursday to 14 years in prison for a case in which he was convicted of illegally funneling millions of dollars in foreign contributions to former President Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign. Fugees rapper Pras Michel sentenced to 14 years in prison over illegal donations to Obama campaign (Shouldn't Obama be sharing a cell with him? - jjs)
Nuking the filibuster may promise quick wins, but it risks unleashing unchecked majorities, permanent retaliation, and the loss of any institutional brake on power. (What are we dealing with now? - jjs) Nuking the Filibuster: Are We Prepared for the War to Follow?
. . .new financial disclosures expose what Osborn doesn’t want the voters of Nebraska to know: he is nothing more than a far-left Trojan horse, bankrolled by George Soros and the radical left's most notorious dark money machine. Don’t Be Fooled by Nebraska’s ‘Independent’ Senate Candidate
The incident has sparked diplomatic tension, with the International Boundary and Water Commission now involved in resolving the dispute. U.S. Troops Invade Mexico… By Mistake.
Fred Fleitz: Trump’s high-profile welcome for MBS signaled a reset in U.S.-Saudi ties, pairing strategic military deals with economic investment to counter growing Russian and Chinese influence. The Trump/MBS Summit: Another Huge Trump Foreign Policy Win
“In recent years, new destructive ideologies have given safe harbor to human rights violations,” State Department Principal Deputy Spokesperson Tommy Pigott said. “The Trump administration will not allow these human rights violations, such as the mutilation of children, laws that infringe on free speech, and racially discriminatory employment practices, to go unchecked. We are saying enough is enough.” State Department to Include Sex Changes on Minors, ‘Hate Speech’ Laws in Human Rights Reports
BIDEN AFGHANISTAN BUG-OUT DISASTER AFTERMATH
To the surprise of many observers, India has become the Taliban junta’s best friend next to Russia and China. Russia is the only country to formally recognize Taliban rule over Afghanistan so far, but in October, India reopened the embassy in Kabul that it had shuttered during the Taliban conquest in 2021. Taliban Minister Arrives in New Delhi Seeking Trade and Investments in India
Taxpayers are footing the bill for up to $30 billion in fraudulent payments, one expert told The Daily Wire. (But it's not a tax, it's a penalty!/sarc - jjs) Obamacare Is A Disaster. Could Trump’s Plan Fix It?
None of these pictures show the comet in any great detail. All however confirm once again that it is a comet, not an interstellar alien spacecraft as some idiots in academia have been proposing wildly. NASA releases numerous images of interstellar Comet 3I/Atlas
This guy gets upset that people call him 'gay' for having a girlfriend with dude junk. He tries to explain it away and asks a question. But, he's not going to like the answer. Dude With Trans Girlfriend Says He's Not Gay
A good movie for grownups about important historical events . . . Please go see this movie. Buy a ticket; see it in a theater. It’s a good movie, and it’s for grown-ups. If we want movies like this, we have to support them with our ticket purchases. Nuremberg 2025
ALSO: The Morning Report cross-posts at CutJibNewsletter.com usually within an hour or so of posting here, if you want to continue the conversation all day.
"Remember the days," he asked, "when all you had to eat was bread and cheese, and meat, and vegetables, and fruit in season, and pasta, and rice, and beans, and fish, and eggs, and chocolate cake? Why aren't you properly grateful for the disgusting slop we are forcing down your miserable gullets? Don't you know how lucky you are to live in an age where slop like this is available?"
Nvidia predicts an even better result next quarter. Since the company already charges $100 per GB for memory on its high-end graphics cards, it is not going to feel the same pinch as regular users as memory prices soar across the board. It might cut margins from 90% to 85%.
Not only is this a dead-end platform set to be replaced next year, but the upcoming - though still dead-end - Ultra 7 270K will provide the same performance for less money. The 270K is a refresh of the current 265K, which is selling for $300.
Podcast: Jim Lakely of Heartland Institute joins CBD for a discussion of their recent polling that shows a majority of 18-39s want socialism, the Epstein files, what will Mamdani do, and more!
Podcast: Buck Throckmorton joins us for a wide-ranging discussion about the cultural and business shift away from the insanity of EVs and Climate Religion, his calm perspective on last week's election, Tucker is a toad, and more!
Our Favorite British Couple Exploring True America Experiences Flora-Bama And Sees A Side Of The Deep South Rarely Seen. [dri]
Tucker Carlson claims that it's weird that Ted Cruz is interested in the massacre of Christians by Nigerian Muslims, because he has "no track record of being interested in Christians," then blows off the massacre of Christians by Nigerian Muslims, saying it might or might not be a real concern Tucker Carlson enjoys using the left-wing tactic of "Tactical Ignorance" to avoid taking positions on topics. Is Hamas really a terrorist organization? Tucker can't say. He hasn't looked into it enough, but "it seems like a political organization to me." Are Muslims slaughtering Christians in Nigeria? Again, Tucker just doesn't know. He hasn't examined the evidence yet. He knows every Palestinian Christian who said he was blocked from visiting holy sites in Bethlehem, but he just hasn't had the time to look into the mass slaughter of Christians in Nigeria that has been going on since (checks watch) 2009. He doesn't know, so he can't offer an opinion. Wouldn't be prudent, you know? Don't rush him! He'll sift through the evidence at some point in the future and render an opinion sometime around 2044. Of course, if you need an opinion on Jewish Perfidy, he has all the facts at his fingertips and can give you a fully informed opinion pronto. Say, have you ever heard of the USS Liberty incident...? You'd think that the main issue for Tucker Carlson, who pretends to be so deeply concerned about Palestinian Christians being bullied by Jews in Israel (supposedly), would be the massacre of 185,000 Christians in Nigeria itself. But no, his main problem is that Ted Cruz is talking about it, "who has no track record of being interested in Christians at all." And then he just shrugs as to whether this is even a real issue or not.
Whatever we do we must never "divide the right," huh?
Tucker is attacking Ted Cruz for bringing the issue up because he's acting as an apologist for Jihadism, and he can't cleanly admit that Jihadists are killing any Christians, anywhere. There is no daylight between him and CAIR at this point.
One might conclude that Tucker Carlson himself isn't interested in the plight of Christians -- except as they can be used as a cudgel to attack Jews. Just gonna ask an Interesting Question myself -- why is it that Tucker Carlson's arguments all track with those shit out by Qatarian propaganda agents and the far left? That if Jews crush an ant underfoot it is worldwide news, but when Muslims slaughter Christians it elicits not even a vigorous shrug?
I once glimpsed Garth in the penumbra betwixt my wake and sleep. He was in my dream, standing afar, not looking my way, nor did he acknowledge me. But I felt seen. And that's when I knew I was a traveler on the right path. I'm glad he's still with us.
Greetings, Traveler. If you still have not experienced Garth Merenghi -- Author, Dream-weaver, Visionary, plus Actor -- the six episodes of his Darkplace are still available on YouTube and supposedly upscaled to HD. (Viewing it now, it doesn't appeared upscaled for shit.) I think the second episode, "Hell Hath Fury," is the best by a good margin. Try to at least watch through to that one. It's Mereghi's incisive but nuanced take on sexism.
Podcast: The elections! NYC, Virginia, New Jersey, Texas, California, and the future prospects of the Republican party...
Update on Scott Adams:
Scott Adams had approval for this cancer drug but they hadn't scheduled him to get it. He was taking a turn for the worse. Trump had told him to call if he needed anything, so he did. Talked to Don Jr (who is in Africa) , then RFK Jr, then Dr Oz. Someone talked to Kaiser and he was scheduled. Shouldn't have needed it but he did and he says it saved his life.
Posted by: Notsothoreau
